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Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013 | 2 a.m.
Sun coverage
After serving more than 2 million visitors over 22 years, the Lied Children’s Discovery Museum on Las Vegas Boulevard North is closing its doors Sunday.
The good news is that a new facility, the Discovery Children’s Museum, will open March 9 with more than double the space and new exhibits whose grandeur and interest-quotient should far exceed the old ones.
Located in the Donald W. Reynolds Discovery Center adjacent to the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, the new 55,000-square-foot museum (Lied is 26,000 square feet) will feature exhibits that “come in line with today’s world,” said Denyce Tuller, director of marketing and public relations.
One attraction, the Summit, is described as a 70-foot tower that rises three floors and “pinches through the roof.” Aside from sliding down and climbing up the structure, kids will be able to interact and experiment with exhibits that demonstrate the basic science of simple machines, air pressure, flight and magnetics, among others.
Other exhibits include Water World, EcoCity, Patents Pending, Fantasy Festival, Mystery Town, Toddler Town and Young at Art.
Tuller said few, if any, exhibits in the current museum are being transferred.
Though the museum has reached its $12 million fundraising goal — the entire facility was budgeted for $55 million — Tuller said naming rights for the second floor, at $2.5 million, remain open.
I hope that the name "Discovery" is independent, and not a commercial tie-in with the cable channel of the same name. The focus should be on educating people rather than simply hocking branded merchandise.
Very sad to see that the Lied museum will be closing, but unfortunately I think that it has to be done. I hate people who always do things in the name of "protecting the children", but in this case I would agree that closing the Lied museum in order to protect the kids is necessary. The library there is overrun with disgusting homeless people who sleep there all day to get out of the heat & cold, and make the place smell like an open sewer. They take up all of the seating that prevents legitimate patrons from leisure reading and research, and what furniture they do leave behind always reeks from the urine and feces that they stain it with. And heaven forbid you have to use the bathroom there where they're always bathing in the sinks.
Kids who want to go to the Lied museum or children's section have to go past all of these people in order to get there, and I do believe that they've been at risk for doing so. I stopped going to the Las Vegas library a long time ago because of these scary people, and I believe that it's also prevented many parents from bringing their kids there as well.