The Children’s Museum in Easton, Massachusetts is located in historic North Easton Village in a 104-year old fire station. This 3-story wooden frame building houses 6,700-square feet of public space with a full attic for storage. Owned by the Children’s Museum, the building and adjacent Outdoor Learning Center host over 50,000 visitors per year from all over southeastern Massachusetts and beyond.
The great success of the Museum during its’ 18-year history has also caused growing pains, as the quality of the visitor experience is suffering with overcrowding. Family visitors have been squeezed by group visits (schools, day cares and other organizations) and by birthday party rentals (an important source of revenue). Restrooms, coat rooms, and lunch facilities are all overburdened. Increase in staff size has crowded the existing office space as well.
The Museum is interested in exploring options for a modest expansion in order to solve the overcrowding problems while retaining the warm, friendly and unique environment of the Old Fire Station.
Project:
Children's Museum in Easton Facility Expansion
Location:
Easton, MA
Date Posted:
June 11, 2009
Project Timeline:
We are ready to go on this project, having already identified the issues and challenges faced. We have also identified potential sources of funding. With a professional architectural design in hand, we believe that we could readily approach these funders with the project.
Our timetable depends on the length of the design process, funding deadlines for large grants, and any additional fund-raising that would need to be completed. The Children’s Museum in Easton is ready to go on the design process. We look upon the current economic climate with realistic eyes, yet we believe that the steady and continued dynamic growth of our organization requires us to move ahead to meet the needs of the children and families we serve as well as work through the challenges of operating a successful children’s museum in a beautiful historic building.
The Museum has an exemplary track record of securing funding for operations and programs as well as for other capital expansion projects. Because of the early stage of this project, we will hold off on soliciting funding until we obtain reasonable estimates of the total cost of the expansion project. We are confident that we can successfully raise the funds necessary to complete this project given our record in securing federal, state, corporate, individual and foundation funding throughout our 18-year history.
