Mobile children's museum to take root next to Schulz museum in Santa Rosa

<p>A five-year bid to find a permanent home for Sonoma County's mobile Museum on the Go has landed the fledgling children's museum a site among extremely provident neighbors.</p><p>The Children's Museum of Sonoma County is moving next door to the Charles M. Schulz Museum, which itself stands next to Snoopy's Home Ice on West Steele Lane in Santa Rosa.</p><p>“It's already a place where families come, so to discover the Children's Museum next door to the ice arena or next door to the Schulz Museum is really a bonus,” said Jean Schulz, the famed cartoonist's widow and owner of the site.</p><p>“It is a great location,” said Collette Michaud, founder and chief executive officer of the Children's Museum of Sonoma County. “We're very excited about it.”</p><p>Museum officials hope to open for business at the site by late 2012, after they've finished renovating the 5,400-square-foot building originally constructed as a church.</p><p>Visitors will pay admission or can purchase family memberships, some of which may be structured to cover entry to other Bay Area children's museums, Michaud said. The museum also will offer classes and summer camps, host parties and rent out the building for special events.</p><p>Thousands of children and adults have enjoyed hands-on interactive science and art exhibits that the mobile museum provides at scores of public and private community events each year.</p><p>The goal is to encourage creative exploration of science, natural phenomena and art through activities that stimulate curiosity and experimentation, similar to what's offered at places such as the Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose and the Exploratorium in San Francisco.</p><p>Organizers all along have wanted to find a brick-and-mortar setting for the museum. But they've managed nonetheless to reach thousands of people of varied ages and socioeconomic backgrounds with Museum on the Go, a shifting collection of mobile exhibits packed up and transported by trailer.</p><p>Negotiations with Schulz over the past few years have opened what Michaud said is an opportunity to extend the museum's use of indoor and outdoor exhibits and provide room for expansion. The museum board envisions use of the landscape for interactive displays that explore art, science and nature, she said.</p><p>Sebastopol artist and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Ned Kahn — who incorporates wind, water, sand, glass, magnetism and reflection in his public pieces, serves as an adviser for the children's museum — and is expected to provide some of the artwork, Michaud said.</p><p>He also has designed many exhibits for the Exploratorium.</p><p>The structure, built in the 1980s, is leased to Covenant Presbyterian Fellowship, known as The Cove, and has been the site of a charter school. The fellowship will retain the site until its lease is up in September.</p><p>“The Children's Museum of Sonoma County has been working hard to serve children and their parents in a nurturing and learning environment,” Schulz said. “It seemed appropriate to offer them this space which has been a warm and welcoming gathering place for over 25 years.”</p><p>“She feels — and we do, too — that it would be a great benefit to be next door to each other,” Michaud said.</p><p>Conceptual and architectural planning is under way, financed by a $75,000 gift from Dow Pharmaceutical Sciences founder Gordon Dow and his wife, Joanne, that was matched by additional gifts.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com.</p>