In November, officials from Lied Discovery Children’s Museum, The Smith Center for the Performing Arts, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation and the city of Las Vegas broke ground for the future home of the city’s premier children’s museum. Construction is now underway for the newly named Donald W. Reynolds Discovery Center at Symphony Park.

A $56 million gift from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation is enabling the completion of the downtown cultural arts and education block in Symphony Park, where The Smith Center will open in the spring of 2012. The Smith Center is using the majority of this grant to build a new home for the children’s museum, a state-of-the-art building – the Donald W. Reynolds Discovery Center.

When the new museum opens in late 2012, its name will change to Discovery Children’s Museum. The 58,000-square-foot, three-story building will be nearly twice the size of the current museum, allowing for expanded educational programming. Nine themed exhibition halls will be filled with all-new exhibits that demonstrate the museum’s core educational values of science, arts and culture. The new museum also will provide a larger traveling exhibition gallery, and programming and workshop spaces.

The Smith Center is using the grant to construct the Donald W. Reynolds Discovery Center, complete the building’s interiors and outfit its exhibit halls. The grant will also be used for long-term maintenance and to construct a parking garage on the site to provide convenience for visitors to both the museum and the performing arts center.

Photo from Discovery Children's Museum Groundbreaking Celebration on November 16, 2010. From left: Troy Moser, Museum Building Committee; Myron Martin, President/CEO of The Smith Center; Fred Smith, Chairman of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation; Steve Anderson, President of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation; Linda Quinn, Museum CEO; Judy Cebulko, Museum Board President; Mayor Oscar B. Goodman; and Joyce Schneider, Museum Board Vice President, celebrate at the groundbreaking for the Donald W. Reynolds Discovery Center.