Children’s Museum Plan Gains $850,000

Adding another sizable dollop of money to a growing pot, Rep. Howard L. Berman announced that $850,000 in federal education funds was approved Wednesday for the new Children’s Museum planned at Hansen Dam.

The money, part of the 2001 spending bill for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, will go toward designing exhibits for the northeast Valley site, said Berman (D-Mission Hills).

The planned 60,000-square-foot facility is one of two new campuses of the popular Children’s Museum approved by the Los Angeles City Council in May to replace the cramped museum near City Hall. The other complex will be built at the downtown Art Park near Little Tokyo.

With groundbreaking set no later than 2005, the Valley museum will be built on a one-acre parcel at the southeast corner of Foothill Boulevard and Osborne Street, near a planned library and the new swimming and boating lakes at the revamped Hansen Dam Recreation Center.

The federal funds provide another chunk of cash to narrow the funding gap for the $10-million project. When the Los Angeles City Council approved the plan, only $3.5 million in state and city funds had been earmarked for the Hansen Dam site.