SPANISH FORT, Ala.—After the recent relocation of the Cypress Gift Shop, visiting students and those attending 5 Rivers Delta Resource Center’s Saturday Adventure series will soon have a classroom to call their own.

“What we’ve been doing is pulling whatever props we need from the exhibit hall and taking them to Blakeley Hall for the classes, but those classrooms are more than a little removed from the rest of our activity, and we’ve been trying to find a way to bring everything a little closer together,” 5 Rivers Manager Hank Burch said.

The shift, he said, will also position the facility’s staff to expand educational offerings and eventually reach the point where “we can pull out microscopes and let the kids get down to work.”

The roughly 1,100 square feet adjacent to the Tensaw Theater is being renovated into an interactive classroom complete with pull-out drawers and expansive cabinetry, housing an array of artifacts from Mound Island and other items the staff would rather keep protected when not in use.

“We’re still scheming exactly how it’s going to look, but we’re modeling the space after the classroom and meeting space at Weeks Bay Preserve,” Burch said. “We’re talking about some pretty significant construction.

Meanwhile, 5 Rivers Maintenance Supervisor Joe Buschell is constructing a hexagon-shaped, three-dimensional display detailing replicas of Alabama’s six poisonous snakes in their natural habitats. The display will also feature an audio visual component so visitors can access the information even when a staff member is not available to answer questions.

“We’re really working to integrate a lot of interactive components to the displays,” he said.

The renovated space could be operational as early as late January, Burch said, and it will also house the facility’s extensive collection of fish and turtles indigenous to the Mobile-Tensaw Delta and surrounding areas.