UTICA — After a five-year hiatus, the Utica Children’s Museum is ready to open the doors at its new location and usher in a new era of fun. Years of planning and construction have led to Thursday’s ribbon cutting, where officials gathered at 106 Memorial Parkway — the new location for the Utica Children’s Museum, adjoined by the ICAN Family Resource Center. “We are so excited for the official grand opening of the all- new museum, and even more excited to see kids and their families walk through our doors,” said Megan Fraser McGrogan, executive director of the Utica Children’s Museum. “This facility will be a place to make memories for generations. I am so proud of our team and the incredible work they have done to make this project a reality.” The Utica Children’s Museum features five galleries with over 60 exhibits with a central focus on education and entertainment in a fun and accessible way — from learning about Utica’s diverse cultures to participating in educational STEM activities, all in a fun and exciting environment that encourages children to play and learn: • Seasons: A celebration of the weather changes experienced across the Mohawk Valley, where time and the cycles of growth are displayed in the turning of the seasons. This exhibit also includes a special place dedicated to young visitors in the Toddler Forest. • World Market: Culture, language, art, games, and more are on display in this global gallery, helping children build cultural awareness and celebrate the diversity of communities and families in the Mohawk Valley. • Build It Up: STEAM-based activities invite trial-and-error design, construction, and crafting that build thinking skills and a growing awareness of the designed and built world. Activities here are filled with loose parts of different scales for building and engineering. • Let’s Experiment: STEAM-based challenges that focus on creativity and problem-solving skills through hands-on practice and play. • The Cove: Low lighting, soft furniture, and calming colors are meant to create a sense of peace and relaxation, appealing to children and adults with sensory needs. All elements are created following trauma-informed inclusive design standards, creating a space for pausing, connecting, and bonding as a family. The museum also features a two-story climber, multi-purpose rooms to host parties and community events, and a meeting place inside the museum’s 4,000-square-foot glass rotunda. “This was a great vision, but it was more than a vision because it looked at the present, the future of our community. Blending in with everything we have here to offer,” said Oneida County Executive Anthony J. Picente Jr. “This was the dream: to make it better, to make it exciting. If you haven’t seen it, it will blow you away. It’s beautiful building. It’s a beautiful museum. The Utica Children’s Museum is now the second museum in the country to be universally designed from the ground up. Accessibility was at the forefront of planning for the new museum’s space, as the universal design concept takes an accessible, inclusive, and usable approach to ensure that people of all abilities and other factors are included and accommodated. With the move to ICAN’s headquarters, the Utica Children’s Museum is the only children’s museum in the country to be physically connected to a human services organization, where museum officials are hopeful to break the stigma of utilizing vital services that ICAN provides while offering a place for children to enjoy. “The children’s museum and its roots could have died on a vine and it did not. What I see coming together within these walls now is a rebirth,” said Utica Mayor Michael P. Galime. “Our future engineers, our future pipefitters, carpenters, programmers, architects, museum directors, mayors, legislators, all of those people that come from our community are potentially going to be playing and brightening their minds in this very building.” The Utica Children’s Museum will open to the public on Thursday, May 1, with its hours of operation being Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The museum will charge $15 for adults and children. $3 for Museum For All members with proper identification. Children under one are admitted for free.