San Marcos — Expect a lot of attention to be turned to the old resort at the San Marcos River headwaters this fall.

That’s when Texas State University and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are planning to begin demolishing buildings erected when the area was Aquarena Springs, the campy, family-oriented resort that was acquired by the university in 1994,

Reincarnated as Aquarena Center, an educational resource that extends beyond the university, it also houses the Texas River Systems Institute, a research and educational entity that also oversees visitors and volunteers.

“By 2012 or so everything’s going to be gone and the peninsula will be generally like it was in 1890,” Andrew Sansom, director of the River Systems Institute, said. “We’re going to leave the (glass bottom) boat docks and continue to use the boats, but everything else will be gone,” replaced, he says, by a series of trails.

There’s been talk about taking out the old Texana Village, office building, gift shop and miscellaneous structures since the university took over, but obstacles like funding had delayed the effort.

Sansom said all those snags have been overcome. “It’s all approved, funded and actually going to happen,” he said. “We’ve been working on that since I came here — it just took a long time.”

The Corps of Engineers will do the demolition, which will involve cutting into sections the old Submarine Theater where Aquamaids, Aquamen and Ralph the Swimming Pig frolicked for generations of tourists.

“The current plan is to cut (the old submerged theater) into pieces and barge it down to the end of the peninsula,” and then load the sections onto trucks.

Sansom said the demolition is crucial to the mission of Aquarena Center. “It’s important because the structures are a liability. It’s really difficult for us to move onto the next phase as long as we have the aging infrastructure.”

Samson said the project will likely be “the most significant environmental restoration project taking place anywhere in the country.” He said the project will proceed with safeguards in place to protect, as much as possible, endangered species that live in the Edwards Aquifer and Spring Lake and archaeological sites that have yielded evidence the area has been continuously inhabited for 12,000 years.

“There’s going to be some disturbance” to the lake, he said, “but it’s all been approved. It’s going to be done in the most sensitive way possible.” Sansom said “in the end, it will be better, but there will be some disruption when it’s taking place.”

He noted that U.S. Fish and Wildlife, protectors of the endangered species, have been involved in the project “since day one.”

The only remaining structure will be the old Aquarena Springs Hotel building that now houses the Institute and other offices. That building was erected in 1929 “just in time for the Depression,” Samson notes, and did not last a year.

“It failed,” he said, after which it was turned into a sanitarium, where people would come for the supposed health benefits of the spring water.

It was restored for the fist time in 1946 and for a second time in 2000.