In the next month, I will become the director of a new Center for Regional Sustainability at the Museum. Other core EcoCity staff members also will transfer to the Museum. Our work and key projects, including this GreenCityBlueLake site, will continue. And, drawing upon the scientific expertise of the Museum, we will be launching a new climate change project to help reduce the region's carbon footprint.
Organizationally, the merger makes perfect sense. EcoCity Cleveland's work will gain a more secure organizational home with the prestige and administrative support of a world-class institution. The Museum will gain expertise that will help it engage the public about how human beings can live sustainably on planet Earth in the 21st century. And Northeast Ohio will gain a prominent center of sustainability thought and practice that will help make the region more competitive.
We are very excited about this opportunity. The staff and Boards of the two organizations worked very hard over many months to make it happen. Thanks to everyone who has supported us over the years — the best is yet to come! Go here [5] for more details on the merger, and here [6] for a Plain Dealer story.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Here is the PD story :
EcoCity Cleveland to merge with natural history museum
Posted by slitt [at] plaind [dot] com [7]June 19, 2007 19:41PM
slitt [at] plaind [dot] com
Plain Dealer Architecture Critic
EcoCity Cleveland, the small but powerful nonprofit organization that has raised environmental consciousness in Cleveland over the past 15 years, will merge over the next year with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
The board of EcoCity approved the merger Tuesday.
Together, the museum and EcoCity will create the museum's new Center for Regional Sustainability, to advance environmental causes in Northeast Ohio and across the state.
"I think this is fantastic," Bruce Latimer, the museum's director, said Tuesday. "This gives us a way to expand in an area we haven't done much with before -- the urban environment. I think that's going to be much more a focus of the natural history museum."
Latimer said the museum and EcoCity, though vastly different in size, are both well-managed, with a long record of budgets in the black.
"This is a case of two institutions that are healthy but together can be even better," he said. "It's not an act of desperation on either side, which is so often the case with mergers. This is not one of those."
The merger begins in July and will be completed over the coming year as EcoCity finishes current projects and moves to the museum from its current location in the Cleveland Environmental Center, at 3500 Lorain Ave.
The merger won't affect the organization's traditional role as environmental watchdog, advocate and public-policy think tank.
"EcoCity Cleveland has always provided an important voice and that will continue," said David Beach, EcoCity's director and founder. "I'm going to assure our members that we're going to keep working on our issues. Nothing is going to be lost in this."
EcoCity has 500 members, a budget of $600,000 and a core staff that ranges from five to seven people, depending on the projects it undertakes.
The museum has a budget of $9 million, a $140 million endowment and a full-time staff of 105.
Latimer said the new sustainability center will publish books, organize programs and conferences, and help shape exhibits. It will also advise the museum on its upcoming expansion and renovation, which is being designed by Fentress Bradburn Architects of Denver.
The museum's ambition is to make its building as green as possible. But the larger goal is to help the entire city become a healthier and more sustainable place in which to live.
"We have to start making urban environments more habitable for humans," Latimer said. "We want the museum to be a leader in the community as to how Cleveland should progress in the future on its river and its lakefront."
From:http://blog.cleveland.com/reviews/2007/06/ecocity_cleveland_natural_hist.html [6]
----------------------------------------
And the Press Release is here: http://www.gcbl.org/system/files?file=Merger press release.pdf [8] press release.pdf