The Westchester Children’s Museum will receive keys to the north bathhouse at Playland Amusement Park in Rye by the end of the month.
The county’s contracts board approved the lease, which grants Westchester Children’s Museum access to its own space after 13 years of operating programs out of 16 different facilities. Effectively, the Westchester Children’s Museum was an idea with several moving parts even before it had a permanent home.
“We haven”™t had an operational museum so this is our first physical space,” Â said Westchester Children’s Museum director Tracy Kay. “We’ve been an educational program, campaigning to raise awareness of the need for a children’s museum. Because of the delays we started to jump start the educational efforts ahead of time.”
County Executive Rob Astorino will sign the lease to begin construction of this $10 million project on July 23. The museum will fundraise to help cover the costs with its first exhibit space opening soon.
“We’ve been fundraising through individual donations, corporations and foundations, and we have a couple of state grants since this is a public building,” Kay said. “We still need to close a gap of $10 million. We’ve raised over $9 million, which is enough to cover the design costs.”
Prior to the approval, the Board of Legislators and administration fought over the future of the park, Â and eventually the legislators approved a $1-a-year- lease for the museum in 2011. However, Â Astorino didn’t sign the 10-year agreement until the entire park could privatize management.
Once Sustainable Playland, Inc., Astorino’s choice for privatized management, was identified as a key investor for the Children’s Museum, state legislators reauthorized the space for the museum. The bathhouse, which the county identified as a space available for adaptive re-use, is expected to open within the next two years.
“This is an important step forward,” Astorino said in a press release. “I have always supported the concept of a Children”™s Museum at Playland, and now we have the framework for it to be integrated into our overall vision for reinventing Playland by saving the traditions and creating new year-round attractions.”
The economic impact of the Westchester Children’s Museum will be significant, Kay said.
“The museum will generate $4.5 million a year on an annual basis,” Kay said. “We”™ll be adding 17 full-time jobs, and there will also be construction jobs. When the lease is signed, we have a 24-month window in which to open.”
