A plan approved Monday by the Uptown Design Review Commission of the Town of Normal would allow expansion of exhibition space at the Children’s Discovery Museum.
The museum said the plan, originally outlined in the town council’s “Normal Downtown Renewal Plan” from 2000, would allow better engagement with the community and provide more programming.
That would be done by enclosing the arcade on the building’s west side — the covered passageway just outside of the museum's doors with the arches as the boundary.
“To do this, the existing windows under the canopy would be removed and new windows would be installed in between the brick columns that currently make up the arcade,” state documents from town staff. “The new windows would be framed by the existing headers and would have a stone base to match the rest of the ground floor windows on the building.”
Shelly Hanover is director of experiences and engagement at the museum.
“So, enclosing the canopy arcade space to be able to bump out a little bit just provides more exhibit space for us to use,” she told the committee. “Our plan for that space will be to expand our water table space.”
Hanover said the museum would make the water table bigger and refocus its education on the water cycle. The museum is in preliminary talks with an exhibit design firm.
“Actually, it will be a brand new water table that we would pull in that just has a lot more play features in it,” she said. “Our current water table is about 15 years old, so as you can imagine, there’s a lot of things that have come along in the last 15 years that we can really enhance this new experience, this new water table.”
Hanover said funding for the expansion would largely come from the museum’s foundation, or its fundraising arm for exhibit development. The estimated cost is $850,000.
In their analysis, town staff said the addition is attractive and would complement the rest of the building’s design, noting the current space is often underutilized by pedestrians.
Work is estimated to begin in November and finish the following April, according to the project's application, but it is following the timeline of the Uptown underpass project because some work overlaps.
The plan will likely go before the Normal Town Council at its scheduled Sept. 21 meeting. The council needs to approve the waiver to remove the arcade. Hanover said the museum is excited to move forward with the proposal, and she is confident the council will approve.
