As the Ark rises in Williamstown, fabrication and design work being completed in Hebron

By Mark Hansel
NKyTribune managing editor

Much of the attention involving the Ark Encounter, the full-sized Noah’s Ark replica being built in Grant County, has focused on the construction site in Williamstown.

The attractions that will help recreate the Ark experience, however, are being assembled at a design center in Hebron that would be dwarfed by the gigantic vessel.

Answers in Genesis co-founder Mike Zovath with some of the animal displays at the Ark Encounter Design Center in Hebron (photos by Mark Hansel)

Mike Zovath, Answers in Genesis co-founder and chief action officer on the project, said the announcement of a July 7 opening date for the Ark Encounter has not altered the design schedule

“We have a separate deadline than the opening because we have to get things designed,” Zovath said. “Then we have a fabrication process that has a February through April time frame, followed by the installation process.”

Many of the animals, bays and cages have already been constructed and are waiting to be shipped to the site. Some pieces have already been moved to the Ark site because they are too large to be installed after the structure is enclosed.

“As the designers wrap up the fabricators are continuing their work and there is a lot of overlap,” Zovath said.

There are so many moving pieces that are to a great degree, dependent on maintenance of the construction schedule 40 miles away in Williamstown.

Answers in Genesis technical designer Harrison Craig inspects cages at the design center in Hebron

“They have to get the sections sealed off and weatherproofed or it holds up the installation, which holds up what we are doing on the fabrication side,” Zovath said. “There is so much to do in the last month, with wayfinding signs and the equipment that has to go for gift shops and restaurants and so many other things, everything else has to be ready by then.”

Zovath expects the lights to be on at the Ark site from the beginning of April, with crews working around the clock to be ready for the July opening. The roughly 35 fabricators and designers in Hebron have already been burning the midnight oil to fill the 132 exhibit bays on the Ark.

Answers in Genesis is the apologetics ministry that also built the Creation Museum in Petersburg. Zovath said the same attention to detail used in the exhibits there is being employed at the Ark Encounter.

“It’s a similar look and feel to what is in the Creation Museum, which is fascinating and really engaging,” Zovath said. “In some ways it’s my worst nightmare because people are going to stand in front of these exhibits for a long time looking at all of the stuff that’s in it.”

Harrison Craig, lead technical designer for the project, compared the talent level of the crew to that of a Hollywood movie or Disney design center.

“I worked in exhibit shops for many years and when I came here, I was amazed at how small of a crew created such high-quality professional work,” Craig said.

About 25,000 square feet of the Hebron facility is dedicated to the design center. There is an elaborate blueprint for each exhibit bay, which identifies all of the items needed to fill it.
The design center is similar to a movie set, with each bay being assembled onsite to ensure it will fit the model.

“We do a model of every bay and it’s all to scale,” Craig said. “We had to build a full-sized bay so we could make sure everything fits and then take it apart to ship it. We determine what we are going to buy, what we are going to make and what we are going to have a vendor make for us.”

After it is assembled, each bay is broken down and each piece is identified. A similar spreadsheet will be used to assemble the bay and place the accessories at the Ark site.

A spreadsheet detailing the items included in one of the exhibit bays at the Ark Encounter. Each bay is built at the design center, then disassembled and shipped to the Ark site in Williamstown.

Zovath said the goal was not just to create an attraction filled with exhibits, but to show that the monumental structure could have been built in the time of Noah. There is not a lot of detailed information in scripture, so the Answers in Genesis team used the information in Genesis and the earliest secular records after the flood from early Mesopotamia and Egypt.

“You look at the building skill and the craft level of what was going on in that early time right after the flood and right before Babel,” Zovath said. “You realize that there were some incredible technological feats with that period. So you have to assume that since the Biblical account is true, Noah’s descendants were the people that did all of that and the technology arose from the people who came off of the Ark.”

The design goes beyond the actual building of the ark to demonstrate how the structure could have accommodated so many animals including storage of food and waste disposal.

“We had to determine, for example, how you get water to them without having to pour water for 2,000 animals.” Craig said. “Our guys have gotten creative, just like we think Noah and his family must have gotten creative in doing this. This is an emergency scenario where they just had to keep them alive during the time they were on the ark.”

Travis Wilson, lead production designer for Answers in Genesis, holds one of the figures used to create scale models for an Ark Encounter exhibit.

A team of scientists also researched the number of animal kinds that would have needed to come on the ark.

“The detailed work that goes into the content being shown in all of these exhibits is equal to the work that is being done on the exhibits,” Craig said. “You can’t ignore the detail.”

The Bible describes kinds of animals, not species, and Craig said that is an important distinction.

“In our kind study, we researched what is the minimal number of kinds we can get to establish all of the animals we have today,” Craig said, “So there is a horse kind that could include the zebra and other animals of that kind. We are saying animal kinds, in the progression from family to genus to species, is just below the family level.”

A CNC (computer numerical control) machine cuts out the pieces for the fabricated animal on display. Some, such as the okapi or giraffe, come from taxidermy forms of a horse. The animals that are now extinct had to be made from scratch.

“We have the digital sculptors cut them up into pieces and router them out of Styrofoam sheets that get cut apart and attached together and then there is even skinning or furring to create a completed product,” Craig said.

Planning continues for the next phases of the Ark Encounter. The project has been master planned to introduce additional attractions that will be rolled out over several years.

Initially the Ark Encounter was envisioned to include several attractions and was scheduled to open in 2014. The $92 million ark is on track to open next summer with additional attractions to be rolled out in phases.

Zovath said that the graduated schedule of attractions might turn out to be an advantage.

“We can have our coming soon sign for our next attraction a month after we open, so people will think ‘I am going to come back to see what is next’” Zovath said. “We have master-planned the whole park, so we know what will be the next phase. That wouldn’t have been done if we had planned it one piece at a time or if we had built the whole park at once.”

A court ruling on a dispute over up to $18 million in state incentives is pending, and will likely be appealed regardless of the outcome. The ruling will not impact the opening date for the Ark Encounter.

Zovath said it is rewarding to see the ark nearing completion and to silence the naysayers, many of whom said the attraction would never be completed.

“It’s satisfying that people see it the way we see it now and the press is reporting on it what we see as fairly accurately,” Zovath said. “There is not the controversy that was there before and it’s exciting for me because I know what is going to be inside these stunning exhibits.”

Contact Mark Hansel at mark.hansel@nkytrib.com