Though the plan is not yet definite, the Louisiana Children's Museum has raised about $7 million for a potential move to City Park, an ambitious project that would drastically expand the museum and its programs.

Tentatively slated to break ground in 2012 and open in 2014, the new location in the park, called the Early Learning Village, would be twice the size of the museum's Warehouse District building. It would take advantage of the park setting and bring community resources together to assist parents and entertain children.

In the meantime, City Park has reserved a site of about 10 acres not far from the New Orleans Museum of Art and near Roosevelt Mall.

The idea of the new facility was based on a study the museum did to measure family well-being in Louisiana. What the museum's staff found most interesting was that, no matter how well-off or poor, "every parent wanted to be a better parent," said the museum's executive director, Julia Bland.

That spurred the desire to revamp the Children's Museum's facilities and programs. Those plans originally envisioned remaining in its current Julia Street home but offering more resources for parents. The museum's steering committee presented its first plans to the board in early August 2005.

After Katrina hit later that month, Bland said, realizing the plan seemed hopeless.

"I remember watching TV and asking, 'Who are we kidding that we can make a difference? Our city is so damaged,'" she said. "It seemed overwhelming that we could make a difference.

"But the board came together, and we decided that we had a good idea," she said. "We just weren't thinking big enough."

The opportunity to think bigger came when the City Park board began to develop plans to rebuild and improve the storm-ravaged 1,300-acre park, revising its master plan to include additional facilities like the Children's Museum.

Some of the features envisioned for the new site, such as a child-care center and outdoor exhibits, are new, but most build on what the Children's Museum already offers.

The Early Learning Village is slated to have a literacy center, instead of just the selection of books the museum now offers. The village would offer a cafe instead of just a snack area; a parent resource center instead of just parenting classes; a toy store as well as a gift shop; and offices for other partners in the village as well as the Children's Museum staff.

The theater at the City Park site would seat 200, the same number as the Julia Street site's theater, but it would have a larger backstage area, providing more performing arts opportunities, Bland said.

City Park officials stipulated in late 2007 that to secure the desired site, directors of the Children's Museum would have to demonstrate within two years they could raise the necessary funds for the project, but City Park CEO Bob Becker said the museum later got an indefinite extension due to the economic downturn.

Neither Bland nor Becker could give an estimate on the building's projected cost, saying many of the museum's plans have not been presented to City Park's board. But Becker said it's likely to be the most expensive feature in the park's master plan of post-Katrina improvements and additions.

The museum has raised money so far from city, state and federal governments as well as local and national private organizations. Bland said. A consulting firm is assisting in fundraising across the country, and the museum plans to use the money it would get by selling its current building.

Many people are interested in contributing to the project because nothing like it has ever been done before, Bland said.

"If we can make this happen where our school system is failing and we're 49th in the country" in child well-being, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation's annual Kids Count report, "anybody can do it," she said. "Nothing like this exists. We're planning it so anybody in any city can copy it."

Becker said the project will be set in stone once the museum comes up with more specific designs and is able to raise all the necessary money.

After a four-month search for the right architect, the museum's board chose the Seattle firm of Mithun Inc., which is known for its focus on sustainable building, in partnership with Waggonner and Ball, a local firm.

Bland said the board is hoping the building will qualify for the highest level of LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, certification by meeting goals such as being entirely dependent on natural light and solar-powered energy.

The museum also wants to make sure the building works with, not against, the natural environment. It would be raised to avoid the destruction that several City Park facilities experienced after Katrina, but experts will make sure it would not be higher than the park's live oaks so as not to visually overwhelm them.

Board members are particularly enthusiastic about the educational opportunities the new location could offer. Plans for a future exhibit called "Dig Into Nature" include solar panels children could move around, a cypress-knee maze, docks and lagoons open for activities, fake water lilies children could walk on, and an area where they could look at microorganisms in the water through a microscope.

"It's a very different way of learning through the environment," Bland said.

The museum likely would keep some of its current exhibits and do away with others.

The Early Learning Village, like the current Children's Museum, would offer memberships but would be open to anyone at anytime.

The museum currently charges a $7.50 entrance fee, but the village would have some areas that are free, so families of all economic levels could use it. It also would continue to offer programs at a few elementary schools, which Bland said often bring family members into the museum's other programs, such as parenting classes and its story-telling series.

Before the 24-year-old museum began building its original site in the Warehouse District, City Park officials offered it a place in the park. But the museum's board could not agree on a City Park plan and fell in love with the Warehouse District instead, Bland said.

Now it's planning a return to the site it considered more than two decades ago, and Becker said nothing would be more fitting for the park. "It would be hard to find another facility that would fit (in City Park) as much as a museum for children," he said. "The park is all about families and children, and trying to help people learn and carry out their desires to live a healthy life."

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Katie Urbaszewski can be reached at kurbaszewski@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3330.

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