Building to be a tribute to the late Sam Johnson

BY MICHAEL BURKE

Tuesday, May 15, 2007 11:31 PM CDT

Journal Times

RACINE -

SC Johnson will soon begin preliminary work on its headquarters campus for Project Honor, a tribute to the late Sam Johnson.

SCJ Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Fisk Johnson, who followed his father as leader of the company, is spearheading the construction project which should break ground at the Howe Street site in early fall.

"Fisk and the family want to do something that honors Sam's legacy to the business and to the community," company spokeswoman Kelly Semrau said Tuesday about the project.

Fisk Johnson announced his intentions after Sam Johnson died in May 2004.

Semrau said Sam Johnson cared about many things including the business, the Racine community and the environment. "But the thing that Sam exhibited the most was his spirit of adventure."

One of the highlights of his life came in 1998 when he, Fisk and his other son, Curt, flew to Fortaleza, Brazil. They flew the same route that Sam's father, HF Johnson Jr., took on a similar journey in 1935 to study the carnauba palm in Brazil.

The Johnson trio also flew in a replica of the Carnauba, the elder Johnson's S-38 Sikorsky sea plane, a twin-engine craft with a 72-foot wingspan.

Project Honor will put the replica on display in a mostly glass dome-style building. The display will be open to the public at scheduled times, Semrau said - as well as being visible as a new landmark

SCJ building.

"Fisk wants people to be able to experience that piece of Sam," she said.

Along with celebrating the Carnaúba, Project Honor is the impetus for other changes on the headquarters' campus. Most notably, the new building will anchor an area envisioned as a "town square" within the company. It will encompass the company's cafeteria and other services.

"I see this as a gathering place, a location where the people of SC Johnson will take time out of their day, and spend time together," Fisk Johnson

has stated.

There is also a possibility that the wreckage of the original Carnauba plane will be raised from the ocean floor, brought back to Racine, and put on display in the new building. The Johnson family discovered the wreck off the coast of New Guinea last summer.

The new structure will take shape south and east of the Golden Rondelle Theater, on the SCJ campus along 14th Street. According to plan, the design will be finished this summer and the structure will open in mid-2009.

Before that can happen, parking needs to be rearranged, Semrau explained, which is why temporary construction fencing was recently erected.

Parking will be built and infrastructure work done between now and the beginning of the main project in fall.

The building is being designed by world-renowned architect Lord Norman Foster and his firm, London-based Foster and Partners. The Johnsons hope the building will serve as an attraction to Racine visitors much as does the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed SCJ administration building.

Semrau said Fisk envisions the new building as "a shining jewel in this community."

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