Marbles Kids Museum plans colorful gateway to Moore Square

Marbles Kids Museum has torn down an old speedometer shop next door to make way for a public plaza gateway to the Moore Square neighborhood downtown.

When completed, the plaza at the corner at South Blount and East Morgan streets will be turned into a courtyard made up of a mural, a concrete grid and landscaping. It will be called “Color Pop Corner.”

Taylor Rankin, spokeswoman for Marbles, on Friday said the project will replace what had become an eyesore in a neighborhood that is part of the downtown revival.

“It will be more representative of the vibrancy inside the museum and of the district, with restaurants, shopping and nightlife,” she said.

The city is spending $12.6 million to renovate Moore Square itself, with a café, space for food vendors, a central water feature and larger lawns and spaces for events. The work will keep the square closed through this year.

The museum bought the .12-acre corner lot in 2013 for $50,715 in a tax foreclosure sale.

The museum project is part of an expanded presence in the community that Marbles has been planning for years. In September, it announced plans to buy an adjacent building, which had been home to several charter schools, including Exploris, a middle school, and more recently the Longleaf School of the Arts high school.

That acquisition will allow the museum to better handle visitors’ requests for a larger space with more exhibits.

MDO Holdings sold the school building to Marbles for $3.1 million, which the museum said at the time was a significant discount. Design work for the expansion will begin later this year, and construction is expected to start in 2020, the museum reported Friday.

This spring, Marbles will take preliminary steps to expand capacity in anticipation of hosting the Association of Children’s Museums international conference at the Raleigh Convention Center in May.

Demolition of the former speedometer shop began early Thursday morning and was finished by the afternoon, Rankin said.

Craig Jarvis: 919-829-4576, @CraigJ_NandO

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the amount the museum paid for the corner lot.

This story was originally published March 2, 2018 at 5:40 PM with the headline "Marbles Kids Museum plans colorful gateway to Moore Square."