The Children’s Museum of Sonoma County is doubling its footprint at its Steele Lane campus in Santa Rosa as officials seek to address crowding and expand offerings for families.
The museum, which welcomed just shy of 200,000 visitors last year, has outgrown its original space in a retrofitted church, CEO and founder Collette Michaud said.
Long lines form outside the bathroom on the busiest days as well as at the popular diner where kids playing chef prepare make-believe meals. There’s little room to add new exhibits with nearly every inch of the main floor occupied by interactive displays, toys and other items.
At the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County in Santa Rosa, David Farish, left, director of facilities and exhibit production and Ben Saari, a facilities technician, put together a water vortex, Friday, May 29, 2026, which will be placed in an expansion of the museum-not yet built. The vortex is worked by a hand crank. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
At the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County in Santa Rosa, David Farish, left, director of facilities and exhibit production and Ben Saari, a facilities technician, put together a water vortex, Friday, May 29, 2026, which will be placed in an expansion of the museum-not yet built. The vortex is worked by a hand crank. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
At the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County in Santa Rosa, David Farish, left, director of facilities and exhibit production tests out a water vortex, Friday, May 29, 2026, which will be placed in an expansion of the museum-not yet built. The vortex is worked by a hand crank. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
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At the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County in Santa Rosa, David Farish, left, director of facilities and exhibit production and Ben Saari, a facilities technician, put together a water vortex, Friday, May 29, 2026, which will be placed in an expansion of the museum-not yet built. The vortex is worked by a hand crank. (Kent Porter / The Press Democrat)
Michaud said the museum has seen growing interest in more hands-on, immersive and imaginative play options along with interest in more in-person opportunities for children to socialize, especially coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the current facility is inadequate to meet demand.
The museum will break ground later this summer on a new, two-story wing that will feature six new exhibits and a larger classroom and multipurpose room.
The additional space will allow the museum to better engage older children, accommodate more school groups and grow attendance by an estimated 30%, Michaud said.
“We’ve pretty much packed (the existing exhibit hall) as much as we can with exhibits, and we can’t really expand anymore so this new space is going to give us much-needed room,” she said.
Children will be able to climb through a large hexagon-shaped structure in Hexlandia, one of the new exhibits planned in the expanded exhibit hall at the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County. The museum expects to break ground in August 2026 on a new wing that will double its footprint at its Steele Lane campus. (Courtesy of Children’s Museum of Sonoma County)
The expansion represents the nonprofit operator’s largest capital investment since the museum opened its doors some 11 years ago and is the culmination of a long-envisioned expansion.
Planning for the new wing got underway about four years ago following the pandemic.
Museum officials since then have been quietly raising money for the project, bringing in about $8.5 million as of January, mostly through contributions from longtime supporters and local foundations as well as corporate donations, including from Redwood Credit Union.
The museum has partnered with GMH Builders of Sonoma and Santa Rosa-based firm Bisbee Architecture and Design to build the project, which is expected to break ground Aug. 28 and take about 18 months to complete.
The museum will remain open during construction.
Museum officials hope to raise an additional $1 million by the end of September to help with final construction costs and have put out a public call through its “Unlock Potential” campaign for donations. Community members can learn more about the project and donate online at cmosc.org/up-community.
More programming for older children
The new building, just north of the existing museum, will be about 7,400 square feet and will replace a smaller building currently being used for staff offices and as storage.
The first floor will feature a 2,800-square-foot exhibit hall focused on science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM), nearly twice the size of the existing 3,000-square-foot indoor exhibit space.
Michaud said the new space will provide opportunities to engage older children who may not be as interested in the existing exhibits, which cater more to kids aged 3 to 7.
“One of the biggest goals is really aging up the museum,” she said. “We hear a lot from parents that around 5 to 7 years old, usually around 7, the kids feel like there’s nothing left for them to do and so what happens is if the older child isn’t coming then the younger siblings don’t get to come back.”
“What we’re trying to do is really engage older kids in this new space as much as we are the younger kids in the current museum and add to the experience so that we can serve the whole family,” she said.
Dubbed the Worlds of Wonder gallery, the hall will feature six themed spaces, including an area known as Aquatica, an ocean-themed exhibit modeled after the Sonoma Coast’s marine ecosystem that will include an aquarium.
Children will be able to learn about motion, air pressure and magnetism in the Explora exhibit, experiment with physics in the Motiva area, climb through a large hexagon-shaped structure in Hexlandia, and play with light in Luminaria.
Another area known as Inventica will include hands-on activities, such as tinker sets, circuits and a construction lab.
The Children’s Museum of Sonoma County is expanding its Steele Lane campus with a new two-story wing that will house additional exhibit spaces, including Aquatica, an ocean-themed exhibit modeled after the Sonoma Coast and local marine ecosystem that will feature an aquarium. (Courtesy of Children’s Museum of Sonoma County)
Children will be able to play with light in Luminaria, one of the new exhibits planned in an expanded exhibit hall at the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County. The museum expects to break ground August 2026 on a new wing that will double its footprint at its Steele Lane campus. (Courtesy of Children’s Museum of Sonoma County)
The Children’s Museum of Sonoma County is expanding its Steele Lane campus with a new two-story wing that will house additional exhibit spaces and a larger multipurpose room to host school groups and events. (Courtesy of Children’s Museum of Sonoma County)
Children will be able to learn about motion, air pressure and magnetism in the Explora exhibit, one of the new areas planned in an expanded exhibit hall at the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County. The museum expects to break ground August 2026 on a new wing that will double its footprint at its Steele Lane campus. (Courtesy of Children’s Museum of Sonoma County)
Inventica, one of the new exhibits planned in the expanded exhibit hall at the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County, will feature hands-on activities, such as tinker sets, circuits, and a construction lab. The museum expects to break ground in August 2026 on a new wing that will double its footprint at its Steele Lane campus.(Courtesy of Children’s Museum of Sonoma County)
The Children’s Museum of Sonoma County is expanding its Steele Lane campus with a new two-story wing that will house additional exhibit spaces and a larger multipurpose room to host school groups and events. (Courtesy of Children’s Museum of Sonoma County)
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The Children’s Museum of Sonoma County is expanding its Steele Lane campus with a new two-story wing that will house additional exhibit spaces, including Aquatica, an ocean-themed exhibit modeled after the Sonoma Coast and local marine ecosystem that will feature an aquarium. (Courtesy of Children’s Museum of Sonoma County)
The second floor of the new wing will include a larger classroom and multipurpose space that can be divided into two smaller spaces and features bleacher seating for performances or presentations or even for visitors to enjoy lunch during a group trip.
Solina Larum, the museum’s deputy director, said the museum is currently using a small studio in a standalone building in the garden to host field trips and workshops but the space is too small.
The museum hosted about 60 groups this school year from across the county and as far away as Lake County and has a waitlist to visit, she said.
“We’re maxed out,” she said.
The new multipurpose space will allow the museum to host more school groups and it also provides additional room for pop-up programming, workshops, meetings and birthday and other event rentals, she said.
Administrative offices will be relocated to the second floor and the new building also will feature storage and prep space as well as additional bathrooms.
Long-planned expansion
Michaud said since the museum opened in 2014 officials had envisioned building out the campus, housed on a roughly 4-acre property the museum leases under a long-term agreement from prominent philanthropist Jean Schulz, widow of “Peanuts” creator and longtime Santa Rosa resident Charles M. Schulz.
“We knew that long-term if we could get to 100,000 visitors that we would probably want to expand,” she said, anticipating that the museum would likely outgrow its space, which she added is far below the national average of about 30,000 square feet for children’s museums in similar-sized communities.
The museum surpassed 100,000 annual visitors within three years, forcing the team to think about expansion sooner than anticipated, she said, though the idea lacked momentum at the time.
Discussions to grow the space got underway before the pandemic but were paused as the museum temporarily shuttered during the health crisis. Michaud said with attendance shooting up from about 140,000 to 200,000 after reopening, officials again started looking at increasing the museum’s footprint.
“At that point, we knew we really did need to expand,” she said.
Today, the museum sees an average of about 650 visitors daily — except Tuesdays when it closes for group visits — and up to 1,200 on the busiest days.
Families seeking respite from inclement weather, holidays and special events can drive traffic.
Officials also have sought to reach more low-income families, who make up about a quarter of all visitors, by offering discounted memberships to qualifying families, an effort the museum hopes to grow, Michaud said.
An earlier iteration of the plan called for a larger wing to accommodate current needs and future growth.
Michaud said officials scaled back the plan in response to rising construction and labor costs, cuts to federal grants and donor fatigue.
“It was either that or we would have to extend this out another five years and with costs going up and up and up we just felt like we were going to be chasing a moving goalpost,” Michaud said. “Instead, we thought what can we build now that is going to serve our needs as much as we can with the money that we can raise.”
The museum, whose general operations budget is comprised of about 40% donations, tapped its extensive list of supporters to help fund the project and reached its initial fundraising goal of $8 million in October.
Costs have continued to go up, however, leading officials to stretch the goal to $9.5 million. The museum on May 18 launched a community-wide appeal for donations, which Redwood Credit Union and a longtime museum investor have agreed to match up to $500,000, Michaud said.
Milestone in the making
With the museum preparing to break ground later this summer, an in-house design team in partnership with Michael McGinnis, local craftsman and Santa Rosa Junior College design professor, has already begun ideating exhibits for the new space.
Administrative offices housed in the building that will be demolished to make way for the new wing will be relocated onto an on-site trailer.
The museum entrance also will be temporarily relocated to Mary’s Garden on the south side of the existing building to make room for construction and a new entry plaza.
The new outdoor entry plaza at the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County, featuring the “Path of Possibility” maze with commermorative bricks honoring museum supporters. The museum is expanding its Steele Lane campus with a new two-story wing that will house additional exhibit spaces and a larger multipurpose room to host school groups and events. (Courtesy of Children’s Museum of Sonoma County)
For Michaud, who established the museum in 2005 and operated it out of a van, the expansion marks a milestone decades in the making.
“It’s exciting to see the museum grow into this next phase, which is something I had always hoped would happen,” she said. “It’s exciting to be able to offer more exhibits, to reach a wider age group and to even be at this point where we’ve been able to garner the type of support that we have for this expansion.”
You can reach Staff Writer Paulina Pineda at 707-521-5268 or paulina.pineda@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @paulinapineda22.