By Kylie Balk-Yaatenen - March 2nd, 2023
JANESVILLE
The Children’s Museum of Rock County says it’s chosen a permanent future location in downtown Janesville and has begun a capital campaign to raise funds to move forward.
Envisioned is an up to 25,000-square-foot children’s museum inside a historic downtown space, the former First National Bank building at 100 W. Milwaukee St., the organization announced Thursday.
It is planned to include galleries with interactive exhibits, large play spaces, multifunctional rooms for birthday parties and meetings, exterior play spaces, a rooftop activity space, gift shop, coffee shop, offices for museum staff, and on-site parking.
Plans would preserve the historic part of the bank building while razing the portion above what were drive-thru lanes for a Chase Bank branch. The entire building has sat empty since 2016, when JPMorgan Chase closed the branch.
Forward Foundation, the charitable arm of Forward Janesville, purchased the site from Blackhawk Community Credit Union in 2020. The credit union had envisioned turning it into a museum honoring the former Janesville General Motors plant but abandoned that idea.
The Children’s Museum of Rock County is now under contract to acquire a portion of the former bank property, according to a release Thursday.
Claire Gray, president of the museum’s board of directors, said the current cost estimate to open the museum—including running a capital campaign, design and construction—amounts to $8 million. That might change as the design is further developed, she said.
The museum said in the release Thursday that it has kicked off a quiet capital campaign targeting major donors and has already raised more than $2.5 million.
The capital campaign is envisioned to extend through this summer with construction to start in 2024 and a grand opening in the second quarter of 2025. All parts of that timeline are subject to change.
“This is precisely the type of project we envisioned when the Forward Foundation purchased this property from Blackhawk Community Credit Union in 2020,” Tim Lindau, chair of Forward Foundation’s board of directors, said in a statement. “We could not imagine a better and more appropriate use and are thrilled that the CMRC is reusing and restoring the historic bank building. This use will be a downtown anchor for decades to come and does not limit us from pursuing appropriate development opportunities on the remainder of the property. This is an absolute win-win.”
“We are thrilled to be at this point with the children’s museum project — finally, a permanent location,” Gray said in a statement. “Many of you have been waiting patiently, somewhat skeptically, as our dedicated group of volunteers worked to make this a reality. Now, it’s happening. The museum will be a significant project for our community.”
According to Thursday’s release, the children’s museum is envisioned to operate seven days a week and could bring more than 80,000 visitors a year to downtown Janesville.
Some reports based on Janesville Area Convention and Visitors Bureau statistics predict the museum could generate $4.26 million in spillover spending in the community with $420,000 of this annual revenue coming from out-of-town visitors.
Gray said in a press release that having tens of thousands of visitors a year drawn to the downtown area will be “transformational” for Janesville.
“The museum’s foot traffic will support current downtown revitalization efforts and spur more development,” Gray said.
The museum’s target age group will be children through age 8, with additional programming for children ages 9-12. The museum is also planning to offer free or reduced museum memberships to lower-income families.
Gray said finding a permanent location for a Rock County children’s museum has been a long time coming. She said the idea for such a museum originated in 2006 as a capstone project of the Leadership Development Academy, which has for decades offered a nine-month, community-based leadership program in Rock County for adult business, nonprofit and private sector leaders. Last fall, the Leadership Development Academy added its first high school students.
But when the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent closure of the General Motors plant upended the local economy, support waned.
By 2016, the museum group was offering traveling exhibits and in 2019 started once again talking about plans for an actual brick-and-mortar museum. The outside world intervened again in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gray said it has been a labor of love between the board and members of the community to get the children’s museum project to its current point.
As local excitement builds with Thursday’s announcement, the children’s museum is hosting an interactive Museum on Wheels event Saturday, March 4, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Janesville Winter Farmers Market at Uptown Janesville, 2500 Milton Ave.
The event is taking the place of the PLAY kits the museum provided families in 2022.
Gray said during the pandemic the museum sought an alternative for families who couldn’t have in-person events, and the PLAY kits allowed for that.
She said the PLAY kits were like a “museum in a bag” with a few activities that involved science and arts-and-craft projects.
Gray said with the pandemic fading, more in-person activities like the Museum on Wheels quarterly events are replacing the PLAY kits.
This Saturday, families can expect an early celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, a mini golf course, trivia and leprechaun trap building.