PORTLAND — The Children’s Museum of Maine is starting a search for a new home.

Museum officials said they have outgrown their current Free Street location, particularly after a merger more than two years ago with the Children’s Theater of Maine.

Additional Photos

Susan McLain of Portland, left, encourages her daughter, Morgan, 3, to join the other kids in the activities around "The Stream," part of Discovery Woods at the Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine. Gordon Chibroski / Staff Photographer

The Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine on Free Street in Porland. The museum has issued a "request for information" through a commercial real estate broker for a new site in Portland. Gordon Chibroski / Staff Photographer

The Free Street building has no theater, said Suzanne Olson, executive director of the museum, and performances are staged in a multi-purpose room in the basement.

The museum has issued a “request for information” through a commercial real estate broker for a new site in Portland.

The request said the museum’s preference is to stay on the peninsula. If a vacant lot is available, it needs to accommodate a building of 22,000 to 30,000 square feet. An existing building would need at least 13,000 square feet on the ground floor, with 20-foot ceilings.

In both cases, plenty of parking is required.

Olson said the museum would like to settle on a site by mid-summer. It would then need to come up with a cost figure for either a new building or renovations, conduct a study to determine whether it could raise the money, and then start a campaign for donations. She said that process and construction could take two to three years.

Prior to buying the Free Street building, the museum was located in a house on Stevens Avenue. It began in the 1970s in a building in Cape Elizabeth, near Portland Head Light, Olson said.

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