In November when the museum was open, Baylynn Fox of Everett slid foam blocks through the doorway of a castle that she and her sister Calla, 3, built using the Imagination Playground Blocks in the Build Zone.
Doug Ramsay
EVERETT — The Imagine Children’s Museum’s just scored a big gift toward its plan to double its footprint early this decade.
The museum at Wall Street and Hoyt Avenue intends to grow from 45,000 square feet to 85,000 square feet.
The addition will be built onto the south end of the building to replace a parking lot and will stand four stories tall. The addition will feel seamless when it’s complete, museum executive director Nancy Johnson said.
The M.J. Murdock Trust announced a $500,000 grant toward the museum’s $25 million project.
Construction is anticipated to start this spring and the addition could open in 2022.
The museum is halfway there on fundraising, and will continue seeking donations through next year, Johnson said. People can call the museum if they want to offer support.
The museum has some new exhibits in mind for the addition: A look at the Port of Everett; an engineering gallery; a maker’s space; an exhibit about woodlands; an exhibit about package distribution; a “marine ecosystems” exhibit; and a few others.
The third floor in the addition would be an auditorium. The fourth floor would add lab areas.
These would join what’s already in the museum such as the front of an Everett Transit bus, a miniature locomotive track, and a water works area.
The addition helps ease overcrowding issues the museum began seeing because of its popularity. The museum had 230,000 visitors last year, which is an increase from seeing more than 222,000 visitors in 2010.
At the moment, it is closed to the public. There is no clear re-opening date as of last week, but they are studying Gov. Jay Inslee’s new Safe Start guidelines to reopen museums and galleries published Thursday, Aug. 20.
Johnson said they are anxious to reopen, but will only do so when it is “right for the community.”
With that said, they miss the kids. “We are anxious to get open — we miss our kids and families,” Johnson said.
In the meantime, the museum is conducting virtual learning series and programming, such as its science club. The museum is doing live presentations over the computer.
Johnson emphasized that the museum began as a community effort to fill a need, “and that need remains to date” to enhance children’s learning opportunities. There’s nothing else like the museum in this county, she said.
That’s one reason why she’s joyous about the meaningfulness of the newly announced grant.
“The Murdock Trust donation is huge, not only as a financial contribution to our capital campaign, but even more so a show of how important projects like this are in difficult times,” Johnson said. “We are more than grateful.”
The M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust dispenses grants primarily across the Northwest. In past years, it gave $300,000 to help the museum open in its current space in 2004, and $165,000 to help the museum convert a covered parking area into additional museum space in 2015.
The Trust began in 1975, four years after its namesake Melvin “Jack” Murdock died. He was an engineer who co-founded Tektronix, a Portland-based measurement devices manufacturer which today is a subsidiary of Fortive, an Everett-based conglomerate that also owns Fluke testing instruments.
