A new, larger — and lighter — USS Arizona Memorial Visitor Center will begin rising in December from the unstable ground now swallowing the current, crumbling center.

Jonathan Jarvis, regional director of the National Park Service, stood between two deteriorating sides of the center yesterday that were marked off-limits to visitors and said, "We think it's got maybe the life of another five or six years and then it's got to go."

Jarvis outlined an ambitious timetable to not only raise the $38 million construction cost but have the work finished by Dec. 7, 2009, the 68th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Perhaps more importantly, park service officials plan to demolish one building, renovate the other, pile-drive hundreds of posts until they reach solid ground and build a larger, 23,000-square-foot, open-air center covered in tent-like material — all while continuing to welcome visitors.

The entire project has a projected cost of $52 million.

TOURS TO CONTINUE

Park officials at the same time worry that the dust, noise and construction work will detract from the solemn tone for the sometimes 4,000 people who visit the center each day.

So crews may hold off on the noisier construction work to do tasks such as pile-driving at night or only intermittently during the day — in between showings of the 20-minute film that outlines the Japanese attack and is screened prior to the boat ride to the Arizona Memorial sitting offshore.

"Clearly, pile-driving and the theater won't mix," said Tom Fake, who is heading the project for the park service. "We're very concerned about that."

Several visitors at the center yesterday said they appreciate the park service's efforts to allow visitors in during the rebuilding.

Charlie Ludvigson, a corn and soy bean farmer from Madison, Minn., who is the son of a Navy veteran, said first-time visitors like him would be disappointed to travel to Hawai'i only to find the center closed for construction.

"If the work needs to be done, we'll have to put up with a little inconvenience," Ludvigson said. "It's important to everybody in the United States to keep this memorial operating."

Glenn Tinsley, a 78-year-old Navy veteran from World War II and Korea who later served in the Army, said, "It has to be kept open. It's a national monument. If this is the price of preservation, so be it."

Steve Christensen, 40, of Portland, Ore., called any upcoming disruptions from construction "just the cost of preservation. We've got to keep it going."

THAT SINKING FEELING

The current 16,000-square-foot center was built in 1980 on fill now known as Halawa Landing, which didn't even exist when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Over the decades that followed, the center has been re-leveled five times, even as some of the supporting columns have sunk more than 30 inches into the shaky soil, causing cracks and other stresses on the two buildings.

The new plan is to renovate the building that holds the theater and demolish the building that contains many of the Pearl Harbor exhibits. The space gained from the demolished building would be used for an expanded lawn area for ceremonies.

Behind the old, demolished building would rise expanded restrooms, a classroom and bookstore and a series of open-air structures covered in tentlike material. The exhibits would be sealed inside the open-air structures to protect them from the elements, Fake said.

The new structures would be anchored by hundreds of pilings that would be driven 140 to 200 feet into the ground.

Jarvis said yesterday that "we feel very confident" that the new structures won't sink into the Halawa Landing ground like the existing buildings.

He looked back and forth between the two buildings and said, "we won't have the weight of this massive structure," while the tent-like structures "put essentially no weight on the ground."

In the center of the structures would sit an open-air Aloha Court, designed to serve as the gateway to the visitor center while connecting visitors to the USS Bowfin submarine museum and transportation to the battleship Missouri memorial and Pacific Aviation Museum.

VENDORS MAY BE OUSTED

To make room for the larger visitor center, which will stretch across 500 feet, the Navy will transfer management responsibilities for 6.4 acres of parking area and vacant land.

Currently sitting on some of the Navy land is a for-profit concession area, which will be forced to close by May 1 to make room for the project.

The concession area has been popular with visitors and offers food, souvenirs, shade and rest at 18 tiki-themed businesses under and near a large tentlike structure.

Some veterans' groups have complained that the business takes away from the dignity of the Arizona Memorial.

But Bill Bigelow, marketing director for the tent operation, earlier this month argued for a month-to-month lease extension.

"When you have a long line here, especially in the summer months, you can sit (on benches) at the Arizona for up to three hours before you get to go in and see the movie," Bigelow said. "All we're saying is let it (the tent concessions operation) be extended month to month until something better comes along."

Frank Hays, Pacific area director for the National Park Service's Pacific West Region, at the time said part of the plan for the new visitor center calls for an examination of what commercial services — like those provided in the concession area — are desired.

The overall cost of the new visitor center is projected at $52 million, most of which is expected to be raised through private donations, Jarvis said.

The National Park Service will contribute $7 million, Fake said, "but as a federal entity, the park service cannot go out and ask people for money."

So the Pearl Harbor Memorial Fund, the fundraising arm of the Arizona Memorial Museum Association, will embark on a fundraising effort headed by actor/filmmaker Tom Hanks as celebrity chairman.

Arizona fundraisers have turned to celebrities before. In 1961, Elvis Presley performed at Pearl Harbor's Bloch Arena to raise money to build the Arizona Memorial.

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.