Great River Children’s Museum Gets Million Dollar Pledge

(KNSI) – The owners of a St. Cloud trucking company have pledged a million dollars to help open the Great River Children’s Museum. Great River Children’s Museum Executive Director Cassie Miles says they can’t thank Anderson Trucking Services enough.

“This is a wonderful pledge of support from the Andersons, Barbara and Rollie. They’ve stepped up to support the children’s museum with a million dollar gift. That is an incredible show of generosity and leadership from our community.”

Miles says the money will be used to sponsor the Great River Exhibit space about the Mississippi River.

“That is an interactive water area. We will be depicting all of our wonderful features that we take for granted sometimes of our beautiful river right next door. Everything from how it provides us our drinking water, to how it’s a resource for helping industries grow in the area.”

It’s the second million-dollar donation the museum has received this year. Coborn’s donated a million dollars in June during a Summertime by George concert. Miles says while the donations are a big help in moving the project forward, there’s no timetable for opening the museum yet.

“We don’t quite have an opening date set. But what I will say is, we’re going to work as fast as we can because we understand that the two-year-olds and the four-year-olds and the 27-year-olds and the 97-year-olds, they’re all looking forward to this. So we know that we’re going to do whatever we can to make sure it happens as soon as possible.”

Miles says every donation will help get them closer to that goal.

“It doesn’t have to be a million dollar sponsorship. I think sometimes that can scare people. But you know, we have different opportunities here for people and try to work with donors at whatever level they feel comfortable with.”

The museum is renovating a 25,000 square foot building donated to the museum by Liberty State Bank after the bank moved to a new location on 2nd Street South.

___