Call them insane. Call them cockeyed optimists, or madcap dreamers.

Even DeeAnn Rothstein acknowledges there was something a lttle bonkers about that day in 2007 when she and her husband, Steve, left their home in Montgomery, Ala., and pulled their minivan into Colorado Springs with their two kids and dogs in tow, with one purpose: to create a science museum that would rival those in Boston, Birmingham and the many others they had visited through the years.

“Because we were such advocates of these science museums, we came up with a crazy idea: Let’s try to create one,” DeeAnn says.

So, here they are, six years later, and where’s that center? Well, it doesn’t exist — yet. But after doing a lot of research, starting a nonprofit and creating a wildly popular science festival in Colorado Springs, the Rothsteins are ready to start fundraising, first for a feasibility study to be conducted as early as March, then, perhaps, for the real deal.

“We feel like the timing is right now,” DeeAnn says. “We have incubated this idea, done a proof of concept and a lot of due diligence on this, and now we feel it is time to make ourselves known.”

The Rothsteins have been lining up support for the center, which they envision as a 40,000- to 60,000-square-foot downtown architectural showpiece filled with interactive exhibits reflecting the science-related industries and geography of the Pikes Peak area.

One important partner they’ve signed on is BSCS, a Colorado Springs-based nonprofit that develops science curriculum and creates other materials to boost science education and is well-known in science circles worldwide. BSCS plans to sell its building on Mark Dabling Boulevard when groundbreaking on the science center is imminent and put the proceeds toward the center’s construction. BSCS would move into the science center and collaborate on some of its programs.

“We’re very committed,” said BSCS executive director Janet Carlson. “I can’t stress enough how important I think this is for our community. Of the top 50 cities in terms of size, we’re one of two that does not have a science center. I find that appalling and think it’s something we ought to change.”

The Rothsteins also favor the idea of being part of a downtown “cultural and entertainment village,” which would include an Olympics museum and children’s museum, each of which is in various stages of development by other groups. The idea of creating a campus with three museums and a baseball stadium was endorsed in an Urban Land Institute report conducted last year on “Strategies for a New Renaissance in Downtown.” Together, the three museums could attract “well over” 500,000 visits a year.

At this point, though, a museum campus is high concept. No deals have been made, no formal plans created to co-locate the museums. But the Downtown Partnership of Colorado Springs supports the idea, and one of its ancillary organizations has provided funds to the three projects.

“It would be absolutely super,” said Sam Eppley, chairman of the Downtown Partnership board. “There’s no overlap in what they do, but they would have a synergy that would be really excellent.”

Finding a passion

DeeAnn Rothstein is a third-generation Coloradan from Rifle; Steve attended the Air Force Academy and spent nearly 24 years in the Air Force, so they’re no strangers to Colorado. But they had been gone for several decades, moving from city to city, as military families tend to do.

Almost every place they called home in the U.S., they found a science museum.

“We were at a science museum at least once a month,” DeeAnn says.

In 2007, Steve was ready to retire from military service, but not from a service-driven life. He was a man in search of an encore career, and he and DeeAnn had a heart-to-heart about Chapter Two.

“We set a value structure: What do we want to be about”? he recalls of that soul-searching discussion, when they were living in Montgomery. “We wanted to serve, invest in community, in a place we wanted to stay, and create something that would leave it a better place than when we came.”

But what would that be? Where would that be?

The answer to the first question came during a trip to McWane Science Center in Birmingham to celebrate their son’s birthday.

“On the drive back, I started thinking about the museum, how cool that center is for Birmingham,” Rothstein says. “Then I turn to DeeAnn: ‘Let me throw something stupid out. Do you ever think about how these centers start?’ That conversation started to take hold.”

He began to investigate which U.S. cities of a certain size didn’t have one. Tacoma, Wash., Burlington, Vt., and Tucson, Ariz., popped up. So did Colorado Springs, a town so seemingly perfect for a science museum that someone with the Association of Science-Technology Centers was compelled to comment when Rothstein called.

“We have this huge question mark on our map on Colorado Springs,” the woman told Rothstein. “It doesn’t make sense at all.”

A few months later, the Rothsteins were in Colorado Springs.

“We put a stake in the ground and said, ‘this is where we want to create a science museum,” DeeAnn says.

They knew it wouldn’t happen overnight. They needed to do more research, make connections, build up to it slowly. They incorporated the Colorado Springs Science Center Project as a nonprofit in 2009. They formed a board, and got grad students in architecture at the University of Colorado-Denver to create seven design concepts. They started two outreach programs: Science on Tap, which brings local scientists to Jack Quinn’s once a month to discuss an array of topics with the public, and the Colorado Springs Cool Science Festival, an eight-day, multi-event program with events citywide, including the signature carnival at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs.

And now, it’s time for the next step: raising money for a feasibility study, a formal precursor to seeking grants and other sources of funding for the center itself.

Moving the dream forward

If all goes according to plan, the the center would open in 2017. Without a final plan, they can’t pinpoint a cost, but they expect it to between $35 million and $50 million.

“I think there’s sticker shock when people first hear the numbers, but if they stay tuned and read the business plan, it makes very good financial sense,” say Carlson, the BSCS executive and a member of the science center board.

Steve Rothstein believes the center could lure 300,000 to 500,000 visitors a year, and whether it shares a site with the two other museums or not, it could be a magnet for the downtown area from well beyond the city’s borders. The collaboration with the internationally known BSCS raises the center’s profile significantly, Carlson and the Rothsteins believe.

“They’re enormous in the world of science,” Steve Rothstein says of BSCS.

The Rothsteins don’t want the center to be full of static, do-not-touch exhibits. They plan for an array of interactive, hands-on displays to engage all ages, similar to science museums in Boston, San Francisco, Charlotte, N.C., and, of course, Birmingham.

“Our target audience is the inquisitive mind in all of us,” Steve Rothstein says.

He also expects the center to host events that encourage scientific discussion and the exchange of ideas, and plans to include space that can be rented out for parties, weddings and other gatherings.

It may seem the Rothsteins have created an almost insurmountable task, but they take it in stride. Steve Rothstein notes that his background with the Air Force is in strategy, and he wrote his doctoral dissertation on “How Ideas Take Hold,” so he feels intellectually prepared for the job.

But it may not take a PhD to carry it off.

“When I started to research and look at other museums, I realized: All were done by normal people who chose a vision and made it happen.”

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OTHER PROJECTS

Two other projects that could share a downtown site with a science center are in the works. Here’s how they’re progressing:

• Pikes Peak Children’s Museum: In 2005, a group of volunteers started making plans to fill the void left by the closing of a children’s museum at The Citadel in 2001. But things stalled in 2008 when the recession hit. Last year, “things started bubbling up,” says Jo Walker, co-founder and president of the Pikes Peak Children’s Museum Project. The Junior League has taken it on as its signature project, she says, and there’s a letter of intent with the Pikes Peak Library District to co-locate a children’s library in the museum. It’s also been designated an “emerging museum” with the Association of Children’s Museums, which gives organizers access to support and information. The group plans to conduct a fundraising feasibility study to identify how much money it needs to raise, so for now, Walker is reluctant to put a pricetag on the project. But she is optimistic that it will open somewhere downtown in December 2015. “That’s our goal; we believe it’s achievable,” she says. More information: 357-7726; www.pikespeakchildrensmuseum.org.

• Olympics museum: Former Colorado College President Dick Celeste says he was “volunteered” by Mayor Steve Bach to look into creating a museum, perhaps because Celeste was instrumental in luring the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum to Cleveland when he was governor of Ohio. Over the past 10 months, he hired a team to look at the feasibility of such a project, with a study funded through an El Pomar Foundation grant. But the concept is in its infancy, he stresses.

RAISING MONEY

The Colorado Springs Science Center Project will have a fundraiser April 12 at the Fine Arts Center, tied to an international event celebrating the accomplishments of the first human in space, Soviet pilot and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The event will include a variety of hands-on science-related activities and stargazing on the FAC roof. More information about the time and cost will be available as the event nears. For more information about the science center project or the fundraiser, call 623-9391, email info@csscp.org or go to www.csscp.org.

Steve and DeeAnn Rothstein, left, and CSSCP board member Peg Bacon in front of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. Photo by Courtesy of DeeAnn Rothstein