Frequently Asked Questions About the New CCM

What is Chicago Children’s Museum?
Who visits Chicago Children's Museum?
Why is Chicago Children's Museum leaving Navy Pier?
Why Daley Bicentennial Plaza?
What are the features of the new museum?
How will the new Chicago Children's Museum benefit the community?
Who is the architect?
When will the museum be built and when will it open?
Is there any other construction planned for Daley Bicentennial Plaza?
How will the new museum impact traffic and parking?
How will the new museum be funded?
Will the location at Navy Pier still be accessible during construction?

What is Chicago Children’s Museum?
CCM is a nationally and internationally renowned cultural institution devoted to the understanding and advancement of child development and learning. The National Science Foundation has recognized the museum as both a research institution and a place for science and math learning. CCM is a member of both state and national museum associations.

The museum offers a much-needed safe place to learn and play, and play is the way children learn best at very young ages. Experts in child development know the importance of rich, meaningful, concrete play experiences in the early years—they lead to gains in language and concept development, strengthen social relationships with family and peers, help form attitudes about lifelong learning, and lead to school readiness. Unfortunately, many children do not have sufficient access to play environments that stimulate this vital development.

All of the exhibits, programs, and activities offered by Chicago Children’s Museum are developed specifically to encourage developmentally-appropriate learning, inquiry, and experimentation, and in many cases, reinforce the curriculum of the Chicago Public Schools. Every activity is specially designed to teach different skills to children at different stages of development. For example, our Skyline exhibit helps young children develop motor skills, while older children learn about engineering and physics.

CCM also offers programs and resources for the important adults in children’s lives—educators, parents and caregivers—that respond to the needs and interests of young children.

Chicago Children Museum holds the same not-for-profit status as other cultural institutions, such as the Art Institute or the Field Museum, and is run by a volunteer board of directors.

Who visits Chicago Children's Museum?
The museum caters to children from all parts of Chicago, with a special focus on isolated and underserved communities. The museum has 400 community partners across city neighborhoods, and routinely takes programs and exhibits on the road to various communities. In fact, nearly 10 percent of people exposed to museum programs are served through traveling community programs away from the museum itself.

Thirty percent of our visitors pay nothing at all to attend, and many more pay greatly reduced rates. In addition to many free or subsidized programs for Chicago Public Schools, CCM offers free Sundays once a month and free Thursday nights every week. When off-site programs are taken into account, half of the people served by the museum pay nothing.

Fifty-two percent of museum visitors identify themselves as African-American, Latino, Asian, Native American, or mixed race.

Why is Chicago Children's Museum leaving Navy Pier?
CCM wishes to expand its programming and become a stand-alone, state-of-the-art facility in the heart of the city, accessible to all children and families.

Why Daley Bicentennial Plaza?
Daley Bicentennial Plaza, at the north end of Grant Park, is centrally located and accessible by all modes of transportation. Chicago Children’s Museum desires to serve as a gateway for children and families to discover the city’s other wonderful offerings, from museums to parks to downtown itself. This site achieves this important goal. In particular, it gives visitors from all over Chicago an opportunity to experience the city’s greatest lakefront park, which many of them never get to see.

The museum believes that the Daley Bicentennial location satisfies four core requirements:

• A central downtown location
• Easy access to public transportation from all corners of the city
• Access to green space
• Plentiful adjacent covered parking

What are the features of the new museum?
The museum will be environmentally sustainable, LEED-qualified, and will tastefully complement the surrounding park with accessible green roofs, natural light, and public green space. The design incorporates creative use of windows built into the park slope to illuminate the various floors and galleries.

The tallest part of the proposal is an all-glass sculptural entrance on upper Randolph Street, outside of the boundary of Grant Park. The sculptural entrance is important because its elevator will serve the museum, the existing parking garage, and the park district field house, making that part of Grant Park ADA-accessible for the first time.

In addition, an on-site café, with an area for brown bag lunches, will offer families affordable, healthy food choices.

How will the new Chicago Children's Museum benefit the community?
The addition of Chicago Children's Museum to this neighborhood will provide a year-round family learning resource that will add tremendous value to the immediate neighborhood, as well as the entire city. Also, the new museum design includes the construction of a brand new field house, increased from 12,000 square feet to 20,000 square feet, with a full-size gymnasium to expand Park District community programming.

Who is the architect?
The new museum is being designed by Krueck + Sexton, the architects behind such notable structures as the Crown Fountain in Millennium Park, the new Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, and the renovation of the S.R. Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

When will the museum be built and when will it open?
Now that approvals for a planned development are in place, the remainder of the design process will take approximately 18 to 24 months, and construction should take approximately 24 months.

Is there any other construction planned for Daley Bicentennial Plaza?
The waterproof membrane over the East Monroe Street Garage has reached the end of its useful life and needs to be replaced. In the next four years, a comprehensive repair and re-design project, overseen by the Chicago Park District, will entail removing and replacing the entire top layer of the Daley Bicentennial Plaza landscape, bounded by Columbus Drive, Lake Shore Drive, Randolph Street, and Monroe Street. The construction of the new Chicago Children’s Museum will be concurrent with the roof project.

How will the new museum impact traffic and parking?
Chicago Children's Museum is sensitive to traffic growth in the neighborhood and has committed to implementing a new, comprehensive traffic plan, in collaboration with the Chicago Department of Transportation, that will meet the needs of residents and visitors alike. In fact, the proposed site is uniquely suited to ensure efficient traffic management, as Randolph Street at that location offers three different levels: the top level will be used for pedestrian access, the middle level for school buses and taxis, and the lowest for service vehicles. Visitors arriving in cars will access the East Monroe Street Garage through the entrance ramp on Columbus Drive, not via Randolph Street.

How will the new museum be funded?
Funding will come from philanthropic gifts by individuals, corporations, foundations, and other sources.

Will the location at Navy Pier still be accessible during construction?
CCM at Navy Pier will operate without interruption until the transition to the new museum.

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