The museum will be situated just across Broadway from the hotel on Minot Park District property overlooking Minot and the valley.

“North Dakota is the only state in the United States that doesn’t have a children’s museum. That doesn’t mean that you are last. It isn’t that you finish first; it’s that you do it the best. And we feel that the museum that we have planned with the Magic City Discovery Center will be the best in the nation,” said Becky Lindsay, creative director with MindSplash Design, an Illinois design company working on the exhibits.

Exhibit design consultants, MindSplash and POW!, presented new design details for the major exhibit galleries, and Ackerman-Estvold, the project architects, showed off the final building design.

The Magic City Discovery Center will have 11 galleries and one 32-foot, iconic climbing exhibit in a new three-story, 22,000-square-foot building on North Hill. The space will include 12,000 square feet of exhibits.

Photo by Jill Schramm Robin Frisch, left, and Becky Lindsay, right, with MindSplash, respond to audience questions about the exhibits proposed in the new Magic City Discovery Center at a public presentation Tuesday.

The project’s capital campaign cleared the $5 million mark with a recent donation. The board hopes to raise another $2 million, board member Mark Lyman said. The board expects construction to take up to a year and half, with opening possibly in mid-2021.

The museum will focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (STEAM).

The discovery center will lay the groundwork for that future workforce but it also will be a strong educational resource, establish Minot as a regional destination and bring economic benefits, Lindsay said.

“To compete in the 21st century, the region needs not only to educate but retain innovative thinkers, capable workers and informed citizens. Your industries — agriculture, oil, wind farms, a lot of other technologies – need a skilled workforce,” she said. “We want to help the education system. A lot of what happens to children when they are quite young builds the skills they need to be successful learners.”

“It will be rich in experiences that are just not available in schools,” said Robin Frisch, experience director with MindSplash. “Your children deserve this and they are going to have something that there’s no equal.”

A key feature of the museum will be a climber, visible through glass on the south side of the building. The climber will take the form of an oil derrick with a B-52 at its top.

The museum’s first floor will house the Air Force’s exhibit, which will include interactive experiences related to the power of the air. The first floor will have the Outside My Window exhibit, featuring North Dakota outdoors through exhibits such as a farmers market and ice fishing. It will have Pattern Place, a learning environment featuring patterns in nature, in geometry, in motion. It also will be home to the Smithsonian Spark!Lab, an invention center.

The second floor will display an exhibit on the science of sound and music, including a digital playground. It will have a building gallery, with blocks for small construction and other large-scale, cooperative building experiences. The Move exhibit will offer tools such as a gizmotron that moves grain using different methods.

As funds become available, either at opening or later, a lower level will be constructed with exhibits on water and light, as well as a creativity studio, where children can experiment with clay, paint, fabric and other materials.

“There were a couple of aspects we thought important to include throughout the museum and in every gallery,” said Paul Orselli with POW!, of Baldwin, New York. “Certainly, core content and topics that relate to each other.

“We wanted to find aspects of the gallery that were reflective of North Dakota, the region and Minot, wherever possible,” he added. “We wanted it to be a North Dakota museum, not just a generic discovery center.”

The museum is designed for the population base of the region in anticipating about 70,000 visitors a year. Earned income would account for 60% to 70% of the estimated $600,000 annual budget. The economic projection is to return $2 million in direct and indirect income to the community, along with about $200,000 in tax revenue.