City May Not Have the Heart for This Building Plan

RANCHO MIRAGE —  Following the same architectural vein as doughnut-shaped doughnut shops, the record-shaped Capitol Records building and the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, California’s only heart museum is planning an addition in the shape of a heart.

No, it’s not the valentine kind. It’s an anatomically correct ticker complete with a glass elevator yo-yoing through an aorta.

The idea is to make room for more exhibits--and make the outside an attraction that will draw children and other visitors inside.

But the prospect of a giant organ along Bob Hope Drive, one of the town’s main arteries, has some pulses racing. After all, in this desert resort community even the seashell pink wall surrounding the estate of philanthropist Walter Annenberg is considered daring amid the miles of unbroken beige country club walls.

The local paper opined that while the human heart is indeed a miraculous machine, it is not a photogenic one, and it has called for the museum’s board to drop plans for Heartland’s $3-million addition. A recent call-in poll of Desert Sun readers produced a resounding yuck! to the giant heart.

“The problem, besides the fact that it’s so very ugly, is that a lot of us here are taking pills for high blood pressure,” said Lilli Monroe, a 69-year-old resident. “I for one don’t want to think about a coronary every time I drive to the store.”

But others have vowed to make the addition a reality, including Robert Kowalski, author of “The 8-Week Cholesterol Cure,” the bestseller that got Americans eating oat bran.

“I fell in love with the building the first time I saw the plans,” said Kowalski, a board member of the museum’s fund-raising foundation. “If nothing else, maybe just driving by will make an individual aware of their heart pumping blood and that flash will remind them not to eat that next cheeseburger.”

The museum is the educational arm of the Heart Hospital and Heart Institute of the Desert, the brainchild of cardiac surgeon Jack Sternlieb. At the 12-room hospital, surgery patients choose from services such as hairstyling and massages. A window looks out on the hospital chef’s herb garden.

The museum now occupies just one room of the complex, which includes a courtyard with neon-lighted palm trees and a fountain with sculptures of frolicking dolphins. The walls of the museum’s entrance are papillary muscle molded out of pink fiberglass. The exhibits, designed by museum curator Adam Rubenstein, include a walk-in artery that fills with inflating cholesterol plaque, a glowing blood corpuscle wall and a two-story human atriventricular valve--all aimed at an age group that eats gummy worms.

Sternlieb said he wasn’t surprised at the negative calls he has received since the first public viewing of the museum addition plans.

“The first time you look at it, it is an odd concept,” he said. “Besides, I’ve had to fight for everything I have here.”

In 1987, the Rancho Mirage City Council refused an occupancy permit for the three-story, heart-shaped (the candy box kind) institute after it was completed. A Riverside County judge ordered the city to issue the permit.

Ten years later when Sternlieb sought to add operating theaters and overnight rooms, the council refused to zone the area for a hospital, even though the prestigious Eisenhower Medical Center is next door. Sternlieb again went to court and won.

“I’m not trying to get the community upset again,” Sternlieb said. “But 77-year-old bypass candidates don’t go through the museum. It mostly draws school-aged children. If we want to change the incidence of heart disease, we have to go after the youth and they don’t want a square, conventional building. People keep forgetting that this is for kids.”

One of his patrons, 9-year-old Marko Pratt, recounted his class visit with a breathless litany.

“When you go through the door there’s this stringy stuff and that’s supposed to be connected to your heart muscle,” he said. “And they show you a movie of a heart operation. They said to turn around if you thought it was gross, but I thought it was pretty cool because I’m used to blood and gushy stuff ‘cause I watch a lot of movies.”

Marko liked the museum’s plan to craft a building that looks like a heart on the outside as well. “Wow. Cool. Rad,” he said.

When the plans go before the City Council, there will be at least one voting member well acquainted with heart diagrams. Alan Seman, an 11-year council veteran, had a valve replaced by Sternlieb last month.

“Do you know what they do? They take your heart out of your body and put you on an artificial heart while they fix yours,” Seman said. “I’m the original cowardly lion, very squeamish. But when you’re there you suddenly get very interested in how a heart works.

“If they want an addition to the heart museum that stimulates interest . . . I’ll certainly listen with an open mind.”

Heartland board members had hoped to open the addition--when else?--on Valentine’s Day. But the board now expects that to be pushed back at least a year.

Before even scheduling a City Council appearance date, Sternlieb plans to lobby at local country clubs.

“It doesn’t have to be love at first sight. When they put up the Eiffel Tower, Parisians at first thought it was an eyesore,” he said. “But I want people to reflect on the purpose of this building--that we’re trying to attract children and bring them inside to learn--before they call it ugly.”