Nearly a year after fire, Tesla Science Center determined to renovate

Much of the damage from a fire last November during renovations at the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe remains untouched, and an ambitious plan for the history-laden Shoreham laboratory's future as an East End generator of educational opportunities and tourism dollars so far remains unfulfilled.

The Nov. 21, 2023, fire ravaged the 10,000-square-foot historic brick structure built in 1901, including the building's roof, chimney and dome-like cupola, with total damage of more than $3 million, Newsday has reported.

"We didn’t foresee this actually happening, but it was our worst-case-scenario and nightmare," said the science center's executive director, Marc Alessi, in a recent interview.

Potential fire causes

A cause has yet to be determined, according to a Brookhaven Town Fire Marshal’s incident report, but a lingering insurance dispute has postponed restoring renowned inventor Nikola Tesla’s only known surviving laboratory, according to Alessi.

The fire marshal's report found "the use of flammable gas fueled cutting equipment," by construction crews, "cannot be ruled out. "Cutting" and "welding too close to combustibles" were listed as potential contributing factors to the fire igniting, the report said.

At an April 2023 event celebrating the start of renovations, Tesla Science Center board member Jane Alcorn described the project as returning the lab to its "former glory."

Tesla hunkered down at Wardenclyffe in 1901 and soon began building a 187-foot tower in an attempt to surpass the distance rival inventor Guglielmo Marconi could send Morse code. His efforts failed when investors, including famed financier and industrialist J.P. Morgan, pulled out, said Petar Djuric, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Stony Brook University. 

Before the tower was torn down in 1917, it represented Tesla’s largest effort to wirelessly transmit power. Alessi said the inventor tested the world’s first remote control device, a toy-sized boat, in the waters of Long Island Sound behind his home on Wardencliff Road, but was forced to abandon the property in 1906.

Damage more than physical

Alessi said fundraisers this month, one in Serbia, which borders Tesla's birthplace in what is now Croatia, and another hosted by the center, will provide a financial boost to rebuilding efforts. Before the fire, the project was estimated to cost $20 million, and the center had raised $14 million, Alessi said. But the fire damage, plus an anticipated extra $1 million to account for inflation, Alessi added, will bump the total to $24 million.

The damage done was more than physical, according to Alessi. It broke out seven months after the April event announcing the renovations, which Newsday reported at the time would include a $4.5 million visitors center, a museum, science labs and a business incubator.

The opening has been pushed back to 2028, said Alessi, who, along with those out east keeping close tabs on the region's economic fortunes, still has hopes that when renovations are eventually completed, more visitors could mean a boon for business. 

With help from a marketing study by San Francisco-based Museum Management Consultants, which provides various services to cultural centers throughout the United States, Alessi said the Tesla Science Center could welcome as many as 180,000 visitors annually, about a third of whom would stay overnight in Suffolk County. 

"We need it to open," said Phillip King, president of the Wading River-Shoreham Chamber of Commerce. "That would help the businesses in this area substantially."

An added attraction

A renovated Tesla Science Center would sit along Long Island’s North Shore between two popular getaway destinations: bustling downtown Port Jefferson, with its restaurants, quaint shops and ferry across the Sound, and Long Island’s North Fork wine country.

"I think people come here and they’ll rent a house and they go out to the farms and the vineyards, which is great, " King said. "But what else is there? That helps the whole community if there’s some kind of attraction here."

The first phase of construction, in April 2023, called for the demolition of several buildings adjacent to the brick laboratory constructed by companies that took control of the site in the years after Tesla left, according to Alessi.

Some efforts to replicate Tesla’s workspace, such as replacing old windows with energy-efficient look-alikes, can proceed as planned. But because of the fire, the brick exterior must be evaluated and potentially shored up. Debris will need to be hauled out of the interior before walls that Alessi said "carved up" Tesla’s open floor laboratory into offices are removed. 

"There are steel girders that were historic to Tesla’s time," he said. "A lot of them were ruined by the fire so they have to be refabricated."

Telling Tesla's story

Following renovations, the center will serve as an incubator for current and future inventors, Alessi said.

"We are going to tell Tesla’s story and that of his contemporaries and celebrate the past with renovation," he said. "But we also want to celebrate innovators today and empower innovators of tomorrow because that’s what Tesla was about, innovation and improving humanity."

Indeed, Djuric said, Tesla and his work with alternating currents "certainly has impacted the lives of ordinary people much more than the theory of relativity."

First, the center will have to settle a dispute over insurance coverage for the damage. The insurer for contractor Green Island Group won't cover the damage, Alessi said. Representatives with Green Island Group did not respond to multiple attempts by Newsday for comment.

While working to resolve the dispute, Alessi hopes to retain another contractor and get "one more permit from Brookhaven Town" to restart start work on the welcome center, which, along with museum exhibition space, will include a small classroom.

Finishing the welcome center is "a necessary step" for collecting the $7 million in reimbursement grants awarded from "from various levels of government," Alessi said, including $1.15 million through Suffolk County's 2023 JumpSMART program to revitalize downtown areas. Recipients of these grants pay the up-front project costs then are reimbursed, he said.

The center is the focus of two fundraising galas this month. The first, in Belgrade, Serbia, was set for Thursday and spearheaded by a committee that includes the Serbian government’s acting assistant minister for public and cultural diplomacy, ambassador Ljiljana Nikšić.

"There’s strong support for Tesla in a lot of Eastern Europe and specifically in Belgrade," said Alessi, who planned on attending the event.

When officials in the Serbian government "heard of the fire," he added, "they wanted to put together a benefit dinner to try to raise money for the cause."

On Nov. 21, the center will host its annual gala fundraiser, its first since the fire. Last year, the event raised about $350,000, Alessi said.

"There’s no cultural institution or science center or museum that was ever started in this way, with basically the world saving it," Alessi said. "We definitely feel the weight of the responsibility and we’re going to get through this setback. We will get this lab completed and open to the public ... It’s not going to be fast, but when it’s done people will really appreciate the end product."