Amid World War II artifacts and sunken battleships, a sleek facility is breathing new life into historic Ford Island as a hub of scientific and marine research in the middle of Pearl Harbor.

The $331 million Ino­uye Regional Center will soon be home to more than 15 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration offices and 700 employees. The bulk of the crews is expected to start moving in at the end of February, joining about 70 employees already working out of the state-of-the-art facility.

A blessing and dedication ceremony is scheduled for Monday morning.

“This is the largest facility capital investment in NOAA history,” said Steven Gallagher, site manager for the Ino­uye Regional Center, which is named for late U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Ino­uye.

The federal agency’s services include weather forecasts,

severe-storm warnings, climate monitoring, fisheries management, coastal restoration and supporting marine commerce. Its mission is to provide science, service and stewardship to protect life and property, and conserve and protect natural resources.

The facility was renamed in honor of the U.S. senator shortly after his death last December.

Gallagher, who previously served as NOAA’s budget director, said Ino­uye played a key role in securing funding for the project.

“He was a champion of the project from Day One. He personally worked to get us the land here,” he said.

President Barack Obama’s federal stimulus package also paid for part of the project, providing $153 million in construction funds.

Five existing buildings were renovated for the project, which broke ground in 2006.

At the center of the sprawling 35-acre campus is a central office building, which is flanked on both sides by former aircraft hangars that have been restored and re-purposed into offices and laboratories.

Officials say consolidating NOAA’s offices and resources will foster collaboration and is expected to save the agency $3 million a year in rent and equipment savings.

“In today’s present setup on Oahu, we have our sanctuaries folks out in Hawaii Kai, we have our science folks up on the (University of Hawaii at Manoa) campus and our regulatory office downtown. While we work well together, geographic proximity is huge,” Gallagher said.

The main office building, which houses a visitor center on the ground floor, looks like a modern museum inside, with high ceilings, glass paneling, huge canvas prints of marine life, televisions streaming live feeds, and displays of various tools and instruments NOAA crews use to collect weather data and rescue entangled marine animals.

Keeping with the campus theme, the building also includes a fitness center, employee cafeteria and lockers for bicycles. The LEED Gold-certified building has multiple sustainability features, including an air-conditioning system that pumps seawater, native plants that capture rainwater for the building’s water needs, and photovoltaics.

“This is something you’d more likely see at Google or in Silicon Valley, not a federal facility,” Gallagher said.

The building’s laboratories include two marine necropsy rooms, where scientists will be able to study deceased monk seals and turtles.

“We’ve been without resources for decades, so we’ll get to do new things here or things that we’ve had to do on the beach,” said Samuel Pooley, director of the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center. “It’s an amazing platform for us.”

A neighboring seawater facility will include tanks for rehabilitating monk seals, turtles and corals.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, one of two warning centers in the United States, will relocate from its aging Ewa facility to the top floor of the Ino­uye Regional Center building.

“This new space will allow us to accommodate more people and provide more work space with a faster set of technology. Right now the entire operation center is one counter long,” said Raymond Tanabe, acting director of the National Weather Service’s Pacific Region Headquarters. “We have world-class scientists. We’re going to give them a world-class workspace.”