The Great Lakes Children’s Museum is headed to the Grand Traverse Mall while its leaders continue to make plans for a long-term home.

The popular nonprofit has been in Elmwood Township for 18 years, but it and a few neighboring nonprofits are set to lose their space to make way for the Freshwater Research & Innovation Center, a collaboration between several organizations that is set to break ground in late 2025.

Children’s Museum Executive Director Tracie MacPherson tells The Ticker that the museum is in the process of finalizing a lease for an 8,000-square foot space in the mall. It will give them time to “catch their breath” while they plot their next move, she says.

“It won’t be our permanent location, but it will give us a place to land while we go through the process of fundraising or doing any sort of architectural renderings for a new permanent space,” she says.

If all goes according to plan, they’ll be moved into the mall and open for business sometime before the holiday season, MacPherson says. They could have waited longer to move, but they’re eager to get out in front of major road construction planned for the Elmwood Township M-22 corridor in 2025 and hope to allow the innovation center partners a chance to demolish the museum building earlier than initially planned, she added. 

MacPherson expects to be in the mall for three to five years, and where the museum will go after the mall remains undetermined. It could be an entirely new build, or they could retrofit an existing space that becomes available. No matter what, museum leaders are using the loss of their current building as a chance to re-think what their museum provides to the community.

“This is a real opportunity for us to expand what we do,” MacPherson says. “Right now we do early childhood education really well, but it would be really great if we could expand out the age and kind of bring in more people under our tent, and I think we’ll do that by adding a science center component.”

The ideal new space would likely be at least 20,000 feet and have an outdoor component, MacPherson says, and be co-located with another “mission-aligned organization.” She’d also like it to be a “cultural campus” of sorts in which community members – particularly parents – can connect and mingle.

“I feel like parents these days are the loneliest they've ever been, and research is showing that,” she says. “So we need a place, a cultural hub, where people can gather and they can take classes and they can play with their kids and talk to other parents.”

In the meantime, MacPherson is thrilled to move over to the mall, which will provide more than double their current square footage. Not a whole lot will be coming over from the current building, MacPherson says.

“We’re moving the water table because it’s essential – people love it and it’s such a rich sensory activity,” she says. “And the Coast Guard helicopter is coming with us, and the slides, because we need gross motor activities, especially during the winter when kids are indoors all the time…but then that’s it, we’re going to pretty much start with a whole new slate.”

MacPherson says the museum has secured funding from the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians along with the Art and Mary Schmuckal and Beiderman foundations to implement new activities and attractions in the mall space.

“The mall also gives me a chance to really test out some new ideas and concepts to see if they stick with the community, if they have high resiliency,” she says.

Among ideas that might generate considerable excitement in the community is day camp, something that many parents feel is sorely needed.

MacPherson is not yet sure when the last day at the current location will be. They are aiming to move in October.