Plans continue to be made for the Magic City Discovery Center to be built on Minot’s North Hill. The idea behind the center sounded good to begin with but seems to get more and more exciting with each new development announced.

The latest news came late last week when design concepts for the center were made public.

Ackerman-Estvold, led by project architect Paul Breiner, is doing the building design. Chicago-area’s MindSplash and POW! from Long Island, New York, are designing the exhibits.

Paul Orselli, chief instigator with POW!, described a 35-foot climbing structure with a B-52 at the top that will be seen through the multi-story glassed-in atrium.

“This will be literally the centerpiece conceptually and physically of the new Magic City Discovery Center,” he said in a Minot Daily News article. “It is framed along themes that are reflective of Minot. So you start at the bottom with things related to the ground and the underground. You move up onto structures that are built on the earth – things like trestles or oil derricks.”

There will be three floors in the new building, each with different exhibit galleries.

It all sounds like a child’s fantasy world, doesn’t it? But it will be very real – and imaginations will be fueled there.

Construction on the 22,000-square-foot center will start once adequate funds are raised. The project has surpassed 60% of its $7 million goal, children’ museum board president Mark Lyman said. Ground breaking will occur once the project has raised 75 to 80 percent of the goal, said Lyman, who projected a grand opening in about two years.

We can hardly wait.

With the addition of the Discovery Center to Minot and the latest improvements being made at Roosevelt Park Zoo, residents and visitors will surely have much more to do in the Magic City. Perhaps we’ll even wonder what kids, teens and adults did for fun before such attractions existed.