Soldiers Delight Visitors Center To Close For Updates

OWINGS MILLS, MD — The Soldiers Delight Visitor Center will close for several months starting this weekend for utility upgrades. According to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the closure will begin Sunday and continue for several months.

The visitor center at Soldiers Delight houses exhibits about the area as well as bathrooms.

Closing the facility through the winter will allow for installation of a new HVAC system.

Bathrooms will be closed and locked, according to Soldiers Delight Conservation Inc., a nonprofit that educates people about the area and the facility.

"We are very excited that this significant improvement is finally coming to our center," Soldiers Delight Conservation Inc. posted on its website this week.

Since the current HVAC system has not functioned properly, those inside the center have been "sweltering during the summer months and freezing during the winter, necessitating the use of portable fans and space heaters, respectively, at a great cost in electricity," according to the conservation group, which is a nonprofit designed to educate people about Soldiers Delight.

"For the duration, all of our animals are being moved into the Soldiers Delight aviary, which is a separate building that will continue to be climate-controlled," the group said. "While the aviary is not open to the public, fans of Soldiers Delight and the Scales & Tales program should take heart in the knowledge that these months out of public view will allow more time for our naturalists to acclimate our animal ambassadors with humans, so that when nature programming resumes in the spring, our Scales & Tales avians, reptiles and herps will be even better suited to interacting with visitors during nature programming."

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources advised people to check back in the spring for updates on its Soldiers Delight Natural Environmental Area page.