Lower Level Plan

New North Dakota Heritage Center

The addition to the North Dakota Heritage Center will provide 125,000 square feet for exhibits, educational, public, staff support spaces and collections storage. The lower level of the expansion is the space dedicated to the collections storage, operations and staff support of the State Historical Society of North Dakota and its Foundation.

Current Collections Space Full: Current collection spaces for artifacts, archaeological and geological collections are full. Original designs for the North Dakota Heritage Center projected that the current building would take care of agency needs for 20 to 25 years.

Inappropriate Storage Being Used: As the 25th anniversary of the grand opening of the building is celebrated, staff and collection spaces in all areas are full. Off-site storage is also being used extensively, placing priceless collections in harms way due to inappropriate storage conditions.

Additional Staff Critical to Expansion Efforts: Professional staff is the backbone of the history agency, providing unique skills and education to a complex task of interpreting and preserving the history of our state.

Current Staff Challenged by Growing Needs: With an ever-growing demand for support services needed by schools, main street business owners, state agencies, economic development groups, county, local and tribal museums, oil, gas and coal organizations, and federal construction projects staff positions must be increased substantially.

The Need for Expanded Collections and Staff Spaces

Historic Preservation Division: Offices, laboratories and file storage areas of this division are full to capacity. Both federal-and state-mandated cultural resource files are housed in this area to meet federal regulations regarding highway construction, pipelines, mines and other construction projects. The division is the sole repository for the state of these significant collections. Archeological Collections Storage is also full to capacity. These collections provide the information of 11,000 years of human occupation. Rolling compact storage has already been put into place in this area.

Museum and Education Division: Compact storage has been utilized for about a third of Museum Collections Storage space and two major off-site storage spaces are currently in use, neither meeting the necessary standards for long-term storage, of priceless artifacts. Collection of larger artifacts has been severely limited for quite some time due to storage issues.

Paleontology Lab: The North Dakota Geological Survey manages the state fossil collection housed in the North Dakota Heritage Center. Current storage space is full to capacity and large specimens such as dinosaur bones are stored off site.

Support Services Division: Operations, security, Museum Store and publications and communications are housed under this division. Cramped offi ces and inadequate operational spaces critically impact all areas of this division.

Public Spaces: Under the expansion, much needed handicapped access will be provided to the Auditorium Space. To meet the needs of other state agencies as well as the public additional meeting rooms, conference spaces and gathering spaces will be added.