Olympia’s Hands On Children’s Museum to expand at a cost of $35 million. City will help with debt

The Hands On Children’s Museum is gearing up for its fourth expansion since it opened its doors in 1996. It includes doubling the museum’s indoor footprint and adding to its outdoor exhibits, parking and more, all at the cost of $35 million.

Museum CEO Patty Belmonte presented the plans to the Olympia City Council on July 17. She said the earliest the museum’s expansion could open is 2027.

Belmonte said the museum has less square footage than any of the nation’s children’s museums that are serving about the same number of visitors. Once reopened in 2027, she said the museum expects to see nearly 500,000 visitors a year.

The existing museum at 414 Jefferson St. NE is about 20,000 square feet, and the expansion calls for an addition of between 30,000 and 35,000 square feet. The new building will be connected to the existing one by a sky bridge.

The outdoor space is currently about 25,000 square feet, and the plan is to add 16,000 square feet to outdoor exhibits. Another 10,000 square feet would be added to a new arrival plaza.

Parking and bus loading

Belmonte said the museum will add 50 new parking spaces and improve bus loading areas. She said the museum has been in need of more parking for several years. It has been leasing parking across the street from the museum and other areas on big event days such as Fire Rescue Spectacular.

She said the museum has about 71 staff members and they lease parking from a nearby church.

“We also now have become a regional hub for school field trips,” she said. “And we not only host field trips from our own area, but we have field trips from Pierce County, King County, Quilcene, faraway places. And so with that, we knew that we needed a better bus drop off and pick up situation.”

Flex event space

Belmonte said Olympia has lost public event space in recent years. Part of the way the museum funds its operations is by hosting after-hours private events. It gets numerous requests for events such as holiday parties and summer weddings, but it doesn’t have a large enough space for hundreds of people. So the plan is to construct an outdoor flexible event space.

Traveling exhibit gallery

Belmonte said the museum has been missing a traveling exhibit gallery.

“The beauty of a traveling exhibit gallery is that it is very flexible,” she said. “And you can bring in exhibits from other places to really stimulate out-of-town visitation as well as local visitation.”

The flex event space and traveling exhibit gallery together would host 250 to 300 people and have access to both the indoors and outdoors.

Culinary classroom

Belmonte said the museum has been working for some time on its culinary program, and it has since won national awards for its Young Makers programming. The new museum has a culinary classroom planned as well as a new cafe.

Additional preschool and daycare classrooms

Belmonte said the museum’s preschool program is highly sought after.

“We often have people on the waitlist,” she said. “So we added additional classroom space. And I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know that we’ve had a number of requests for some sort of a daycare program. As we plan for space, we plan for more classrooms, which would give us the flexibility of possibly doing that if we decided there was still a community need and we could manage it.”

The money

Belmonte said most of the $35 million project — $23 million — will be covered by Public Facilities District funds.

City Manager Jay Burney said because the City of Olympia owned all property assets when the museum was first built, the nonprofit behind the museum struggled to receive loan money. He said he expects the same scenario to occur this time around, and so the plan is for the city to carry the museum’s debt.

“The idea is that we would bond for the entire $35 million of the project,” he said. “The extension of PFD goes out to 2043, so we think there’ll be about $23 million in PFD revenue that will come in over that time, and that will pay a portion of the debt service.”

He said the museum will then be responsible for paying the rest of the debt through fundraising over the next 20 years.

Burney said the City Council’s debt capacity allows them to authorize the arrangement without a public vote. The capacity is equal to the first 1.5% of the city’s total property value, which is $166 million. The city currently has an outstanding non-voted debt of about $48 million.