Drivers headed down 22nd Avenue in Meridian are noticing progress on the city’s newest addition, the Mississippi Children’s Museum-Meridian.

The 25,000-square-foot facility is the satellite campus of the statewide Mississippi Children’s Museum in Jackson. According to Executive Director Liz Wilson, the museum is slated to open on schedule in spring 2021.

Bringing in an estimated 51,000 visitors each year to the Queen City, the MCM will feature 10,000 square feet of interior exhibits.

“The windows just went in this weekend,” Wilson said last week. “So we are steadily making progress, despite the challenges of the pandemic.”

Most recently, Wilson and Susan Garrard, MCM President and CEO, took a 14-hour road trip to Omaha, Nebraska, to view the museum’s exhibit fabricators. Wilson and Garrard were joined with representatives from Kraemer Design + Productions on the two-day site visit to tour Heartland Scenic Studios, a state-of-the-art facility.

In addition to fabrication, future MCM exhibits are tested at the Heartland Studio for durability and usability. During their tour, Wilson and Garrard saw a larger-than-life guitar, a mobile health clinic with sirens, an x-ray machine, and the reimagining of the Red Hot Café, complete with sizzling grill and pizza oven.

“This visit just gave us a small taste of what Meridian can expect,” Wilson said. “For so long, these exhibits only existed on paper, and to see them come to life is so exciting.”

Wilson and Garrard also delivered some artifacts collected from East Mississippi, including a Peavey guitar, a Slater Design surfboard sporting the eco-friendly algae traction pad created by Bloom, and a golf putter made famous by golfing legend Jack Nicklaus.

“All of these artifacts will be displayed within the museum’s WonderBox tinkering lab,” Wilson said. 

The exhibits will be complete later this year, then moved to Meridian for installation. Until then, Wilson says the museum continues to fundraise while engaging the community with many digital options and virtual opportunities.

“Our Building Tomorrow Together” campaign is still going strong,” Wilson said. “We are celebrating and thanking our supporters, like CF Rail Services, a company based in the Midwest, that just made a $5,000 donation to MCM-Meridian. And, of course, we are thankful for our volunteers, our MCM Partners, who enable us to provide hands-on opportunities for children and families.”