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Mayor Jean Stothert and museum officials announced Thursday the museum will move from 20th and Howard streets to Heartland of America Park. The museum will be paired with a high-end apartment complex called The Beam, which will be built by the firm NuStyle Development, bordering the park at Eighth and Douglas streets. The Beam will feature 261 apartments and have four levels of parking for members of the public when it is completed in spring 2028.

The future Omaha Children’s Museum building and The Beam will be the latest additions to an area the city and the Metropolitan Entertainment and Convention Authority have dubbed The RiverFront. The area has undergone significant redevelopment since 2019. The children’s museum will join other attractions including the Kiewit Luminarium, the skate ribbon and the Gene Leahy Mall.

“I’ve been dreaming about this for a long time,” Children’s Museum CEO Fawn Taylor said in an interview.

Museum officials estimate the future museum will cost $113 million. Taylor said private funds will be used, including funds from Heritage Omaha and philanthropists Susan and Mike Lebens, who have been involved with the Children’s Museum for decades.

Susan Lebens and Taylor said planning the new children’s museum started about a decade ago. Lebens said she and other museum officials and stakeholders looked at several spots for the future museum but The Beam’s development is what sealed the deal to build it along the riverfront.

“That’s when the momentum really got going,” Lebens told reporters.

Children’s Museum officials refrained from sharing many details about what will be at the future Children’s Museum. The current museum offers interactive exhibits, rides and shows designed to entertain and educate children.

Taylor said officials plan to bring along some of its current exhibits as well as adding new exhibits. Taylor declined to specify what exhibits will be at the new museum, saying details will be released sometime after the museum compiles results of an ongoing survey with adults and children.

“We’re in the earliest stages,” she told reporters. “There are a lot of favorites. I don’t want to spoil it because we want to hear from the community.”

Taylor invited kids and adults to give their input on what the new museum should have. The survey will be online at through Dec. 15. Survey participants are eligible to enter a weekly drawing to win a one-year family membership.

The planned riverfront museum will be about 15,000 square feet larger than the current 60,000-square-foot Children’s Museum. Noting the current museum used to be a car dealership, Taylor said the new museum will be more conducive to being navigable for children.

“It will be a purpose-built museum” for children, she said.

Lebens, who headed the Children’s Museum building committee back when the museum moved into the current facility in the 1980s, said having the museum along the riverfront will be “thrilling” given the close proximity to more parking spots, the ORBT rapid bus transit line and the future streetcar line.

Ariel Panowicz, who owns creative studio and event space Luli Creative House one block east from the Children’s Museum, said she’s excited about what the riverfront museum could offer for children like her 4-year-old daughter, Penny. Penny said some of her favorite things to do at the children’s museum include seeing shows in the children’s theater and riding the carousel.

“It will be nice to have more space to have, from an educational standpoint, to have some freshened up, new and more innovative interactive things for them to play with,” Panowicz said.

Panowicz said she’s also excited at the idea of having the children’s museum near other riverfront facilities and activities including the Kiewit Luminarium and the Gene Leahy Mall playground.

“The Children’s Museum right now is fairly isolated. So I think it will be nice to support all the other places in town around the riverfront as well,” she said.

Children’s Museum officials said what will happen to the current museum building after the new building opens has not yet been determined.

‘An amazing project’

The Beam will help address downtown Omaha’s housing and parking needs, officials said.

Plans call for The Beam to have 261 apartments built across 12 stories. When the complex is completed in spring 2028, the wood timber building, stylized similarly to the buildings in the Old Market will sit on top of a four-story public parking garage on land currently owned by the city.

The parking garage is part of the city’s plan to build and operate two parking garages as well as a surface lot that together will add about 600 parking spots, Stothert said. In an interview, she called The Beam’s development as well as the Children’s Museum’s future location “a great example of public-private partnerships, philanthropy and nonprofits.”

Stothert said cost estimates to develop the parking area are about $36 million. A city press release said the city will pay $26 million using lease purchase bonds. Stothert said those bonds will be paid off with parking revenues collected from garage and surface lot users.

NuStyle Development expects to invest $87 million to build the apartment building. NuStyle President Todd Heistand said the company has requested $13 million in tax increment financing from the city to redevelop the site, which he said currently contains lead and 100-year-old infrastructure.

“That all has to be changed,” Heistand said.

Heistand said The Beam apartments will be at the upper end of the rental market with estimated rents ranging from $1,200 to $2,500 per month.

The Beam marks the latest announced project from NuStyle Development. The firm is currently renovating Central Park Plaza, along 15th Street between Douglas and Farnam Streets, into a 700-unit apartment complex called The Duo.

Heistand said The Beam and Duo projects would not be possible if the city didn’t have plans to build the streetcar. Both apartment complexes will be along the streetcar route.

The Beam is expected to add to the city’s skyline and give residents views of the Missouri River when it is completed in spring 2028.

“It’s just an amazing project,” Stothert said.