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When Oregon Museum of Science and Industry officials decided to build a coastal science camp in Newport, the struggle was figuring out how to make the site feel remote.

The 22-acre property, which once housed a drive-in movie theater, is adjacent to South Beach State Park and has easy access to the beach, dunes and rare coastal wetlands. The site also sits within the Newport city limits, west of U.S. Route 101 and near the Yaquina Bay Bridge.

The location of the $10 million Coastal Discovery Center at Camp Gray will make it a lot different from OMSI’s Hancock Field Station, which hosts camps at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in a sparsely populated part of Central Oregon, said Jamie Hurd, the museum’s vice president of programs.

“(The Coastal Discovery Center is) unique for outdoor education because it’s in the city of Newport,” Hurd said. “How do you make it feel removed from, say, Highway 101? It’s been an interesting discussion.”

OMSI has long rented space at the Oregon Coast to run science programs, but eight years ago it began to consider building its own camp there, Hurd said. Plans for the Coastal Discovery Center include bunkhouses with a total of 150 beds, classrooms, outdoor learning spaces, dining and kitchen facilities and staff housing. It could eventually serve more than 5,000 people a year and host educational programs covering topics such as dune ecology, ocean observation, wave energy and sustainable fishing.

Last fall, the museum hired Portland-based Dangermond Keane Architecture to design the center; it recently wrapped up conceptual design. Also, Portland-based Walker Macy and Emeryville, Calif.-based Siegel & Strain Architects are contributing to the design.

OMSI is in the process of selecting a general contractor. Construction is scheduled to start in spring 2015, and the goal is for the first camps to take place at the site in April 2016, Hurd said.

The advantage of the planned camp’s location will be its proximity to the Oregon Coast Aquarium and Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center, said Christopher Keane, a principal with Dangermond Keane Architecture. However, the firm was challenged to consider careful site planning that will make the camp feel removed from the rest of Newport, he said. More dunes may be built around the site to block the view of commercial buildings across U.S. 101 and limit vehicle access.

“The cars drop off and then you don’t see the cars any more is the idea,” he said. “(The center) really wants to be an anchor piece to this fantastic learning environment that’s out there, but at the same time be on its own.”

Lodging will be broken up into a series of bunkhouses that will serve schoolchildren and family groups, Keane said. The aesthetic for the bunkhouses was inspired by coastal lodging once used by Native Americans, loggers and farm communities, he said.

“We’ve been looking a lot at traditional longhouses and coastal bunkhouses,” he said. “We’re looking at very simple forms.”

The center is designed to meet one of OMSI’s biggest goals for its outdoor science programs: maximizing the amount of time children spend in nature, Keane said. Covered outdoor courtyards and gazebo-style outdoor classrooms near trailheads help achieve this, Hurd said.

“We have these covered outdoor spaces so we can gather the kids and get them ready to go out,” she said.

Keane said a large part of the design process involved finding the best way to emphasize the transition visitors will experience going from an urban environment to a secluded, natural area.

“… The stage we’re at now is careful site planning; it’s just that process of thinking about how one arrives,” he said. “It’s much more about the arrival moment and keeping the utilitarian parts of running the camp away from what it’s about, which is experiencing nature.”

ESA Vigil-Agrimis will provide civil and environmental engineering for the project, Equilibrium Engineers will provide structural engineering and PAE Consulting Engineers will provide mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering.