MOSH Jacksonville furthers plan for moving to Northbank Shipyards

MOSH, Jacksonville's Museum of Science & History, is going full speed ahead with its plans to move across the river.

Bruce Fafard, who was named MOSH CEO last week, said plans still call for MOSH to move to a new facility on the Shipyards property near TIAA Bank Field by the end of 2024. MOSH's leadership team meets once a week to work on the fundraising, planning and logistics needed to make the move happen. The goal, he said, is to have a complete roadmap of the process completed by mid-February.

"There are a number of critical milestones that we have laid out. Funding is certainly one of them," Fafard said in a phone interview. "We are still cautiously optimistic that we will be able to hit an end of 2024 target. There’s a lot of things that go into it."

High on the list of things that have to happen before any move is fundraising. In 2019, the museum released its ambitious MOSH 2.0 plan, which called for raising $20-$25 million from private sources to renovate the existing Southbank campus and tie it in with the adjacent Friendship Fountain. That plan was scrapped in October in favor of building a new facility across the river.

Donors, including Shad Kahn, support  new museum

Fafard said MOSH has raised about 30 percent of that money. Much of it was donated for the old MOSH 2.0 plan, but Fafard said those donors have been supportive of MOSH Genesis, the plan for a new museum.

"Part of the due diligence that the board went through starting back in October 2019 was to reach out to the donor base that had contributed and have face-to-face meetings with them," he said. "To a donor, they supported it. They felt it was the right move for MOSH."

Shad Khan, owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars, donated $5 million to the project in November after the planned move was announced. Khan has plans to develop several parcels of land near the new museum site.

The price tag for the new facility will be around $85 million. Fafard said MOSH is looking at city, state and federal grants to cover the bulk of the construction expense.

MOSH has heard back from 10 architectural firms that specialize in museum design, Fafard said. None of the design firms are local, but the company chosen for the design will be required to work with a local firm.

He said he hopes to soon have the list of design firms narrowed to three. "The goal is to have an architect hired by early June, then go ahead with the actual building design." 

The museum owns the existing building, but it sits on city-owned land. Fafard said he plans to work with the city's Downtown Investment Authority to find ways to repurpose the MOSH building. 

"Potentially, I would think there are a number of uses for this building. It could be used as an event space because we have big open areas. It could be converted potentially to a school," he said. "I think it would be prudent for us to actually work alongside DIA to help them find a use for the building."

MOSH planning summer camps

MOSH, like nearly every museum in the world, shut down in March when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. It reopened in June, with timed ticketing and face coverings required for everyone over age 2. The museum is now open Thursday through Sunday every week.

"We are getting though the pandemic like every other cultural institution in the area. We are holding our own," Fafard said. "We are very confident that we made the right choices initially to deal with the pandemic and we are going to continue to do that."

For now, the museum is going ahead with plans for summer camps, which were suspended last year. MOSH ran a few camps over the holidays, and Fafard said they learned some important lessons about how many campers they can handle and how to keep them safe. 

"We’re going to stat very conservatively and cautiously," he said. "We will open registration in a few months and we will base it on a socially distanced model."