The Children’s Museum of Richmond is expanding.
On Monday the museum unveiled a rendering of its new outpost at Short Pump, which is scheduled to open in June.
The organization leased 15,500 square feet of space at 2200 Old Brick Road in West Broad Village, across from Whole Foods Market. The space had been built out for Books-A-Million, which reversed its decision to open a store in the new mixed-use development last year.
Karen Coltrane, CEO at the museum, was on site Monday along with other staff and said the she looked at locations all over the region.
“We looked all over at where people congregate and did some market research. There are a lot of people who say they love the Children’s Museum, but that it’s just not convenient enough,” Coltrane said.
She said that about one-third of all museum members live in the West End and that the museum has been looking for ways to reach a greater percentage of the Short Pump area population.
“We figured the most cost-effective way to reach West-Enders was to come to them,” Coltrane said.
Museum staff members also hope to attract residents of Chesterfield County because of the new location’s close proximity to Route 288.
Coltrane said the decision to add another branch is partially a creative funding initiative.
“We are an institution dedicated to fostering creativity, so it made sense that we use the innovative thinking of our board, staff and volunteers to devise our own creative solution for the museum’s business challenges. We believe a branching model allows the organization to have much more impact throughout our community by generating more resources for our core mission.”
Henrico County Manager Virgil Hazelett describes the new location as a welcome addition to the area.
“We are delighted to have such a highly regarded nonprofit organization whose mission is dedicated to early childhood education come into Henrico County,” Hazelett said. “We see the addition of the services provided by the Children’s Museum of Richmond as a great asset to our county.”
The new location will be known as the Children’s Museum of Richmond-Short Pump, while the original location will be called Richmond-Central.
The downtown location will continue to operate as normal with all exhibits, camps and other programs.
The West Broad Village location will be open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and members will have access to both locations at no additional charge. The non-member rate will remain unchanged at $8 for either location.
Trevor Dickerson runs DowntownShortpump.com, which is an RBS News partner.
The Children’s Museum is truly a gift to the City of Richmond. My wife and I have frequented it with our grandchildren since my moving here five years ago. It is a place of unique exploration for the little ones. It is a hands on experience and one that leads to lots and lots of questions as well as a sense of accomplishment for them.
I certainly understand the objective of making the museum easily accessable to all but the “Central” Children’s Museum is easily accessable from all parts of the Greater Richmond Area. Richmond is a beautiful city with so much in the way of art, fine art, science and history located in a concentrated area of its own “Center”. The decision and cost to duplicate the Children’s Museum in the densely populated and heavily traveled Short Pump area shows little forethought as to how those funds could have been directed to the existing museum for expansion and upgrading. The decision also is indicative of the lack of a sound sense of community to encourage families to come to the City and participate in its richness.
I am personally very disappointed in Ms. Coltrane, her board of directors and other benefactors of the Children’s Museum. Having one-third of the the museum’s membership living in the West End is not reason enough to go to them. To do so just creates another reason for those families NOT to come into town and experience all that the City offers. Those children may never know about or experience the wonders of our Science Museum, of Maymont Park, of Browns and Bell Islands, of the Fall of the James, of Cary Town and its unique shops and restaurants, or even of our newest “inhabitants” the Flying Squirrels.
They will miss so much of our history and what it truly means to be part of the urban experience. For myself and my extended family, children and grandchildren (when they are with us), we have little interest in “coming out to the Burbs” to sit in traffic, shop where most every store is a mirror image of its neighbors, and eat “chain food.”…..Bob Scudder
I appreciate Mr. Scudder’s note and the fact that he and Mrs. Scudder frequently take their grandchildren to the Children’s Museum. I hope they will continue to come to our main campus on Broad Street as we continue to improve and upgrade our facilities for the benefit of our community’s children. I also appreciate their love of the museum, an affection shared by all of us responsible for its success.
I can personally assure Mr. Scudder and others that the museum’s Board of Trustees carefully considered the organization’s role in the community when making the decision to open a facility in Short Pump. In fact, the well being of our Broad Street location was our first and foremost concern as we deliberated the steps that were in the best interest of accomplishing our mission for Richmond’s children. For years, the museum has struggled to be financially viable while offering low cost services to most, and free services to thousands of under-resourced children and families. After much discussion and reflection, we decided to focus on what the museum does best: serving the greatest number of children with environments and programs that encourage joyful learning. We feel a strong obligation to the children in the urban core, and that is why we elected to open a satellite location to help us earn more revenue to pursue our mission.
We weighed decisions made by other organizations such as the YMCA as we considered our options. The Y opened locations throughout the community, the revenue from which helps them support the services they provide downtown. Our problems and goals are similar: How to be sure that we could continue to serve the children of our city and surrounding communities from our Broad Street campus? Over the past two years, the museum’s Board of Trustees has raised and invested nearly $1,000,000 in capital improvements at C-MOR on Broad. And we have many more exciting plans for the future of our principle location. Our home lies on Broad Street.
However, the reality is that it costs $2.3 million to operate the museum for 355 days each year. Like other non-profit organizations, we are grateful for our donated revenue although increasingly, we need to rely on earned income in order to succeed. Today, our earned income is well over 70% of our total budget. Our conclusion, after studying all of the issues closely, was that investment in a second location would enable us to substantially enhance our earned income thereby producing more revenue for the museum as a whole.
Compared to the cost of running other cultural institutions in town, the Children’s Museum is a bargain – and a real bargain when you consider that no direct tax dollars support the museum. In addition to raising all of the museum’s capital support, we also have to raise $50,000 per month in operating support to keep the museum open. We are extremely grateful to those corporations, foundations and individuals who care enough about what we do and the impact we have to contribute, and we would welcome Mr. Scudder as a financial supporter, too.
With limited financial reserves and growing expenses, we are mindful that we have for- profit competitors for the time and hearts of Richmond’s children and the resources of their parents, caregivers and schools. C-MOR’s Board believes our ‘education through play’ mission for children is unique and they have foreseen the need to be proactive in order that our mission is not jeopardized. That has happened in other communities when children’s museums such as ours underestimated the ever expanding marketplace of children’s services. For the benefit of Mr. Scudder’s grandchildren and the other children we serve, we are doing our best to keep C-MOR Central their vibrant, fun and educational home away from home.