TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — The company that owns Biosphere 2 Center, 3.1 glass-enclosed acres designed to simulate Earth’s environment, has put the site up for sale.
The company is also selling 70 other buildings on the center’s 140-acre campus 16 miles north of Tucson, said Christopher Bannon, general manager of Decisions Investment Corp. of Fort Worth, Texas.
“We’d love to see the Biosphere 2 used as a research activity, but we know that may not be the end result,” he said last week.
Texas billionaire Ed Bass, president of Decisions Investment, spent more than $200 million to build Biosphere 2 in the 1980s as a prototype for a space colony.
The closed ecological site contained miniatures of Earth’s rain forest, ocean, desert and other environmental features.
In 1991, eight “biospherians” were sealed inside for a two-year stay. But the project was plagued by rising costs and other setbacks, and Columbia University assumed responsibility for the site under a management agreement, turning it into a research and education facility.
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