The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum plans to build a new $25-million campus to accommodate its growing popularity.
NLBM President Bob Kendrick made the announcement on the 103rd anniversary of the first Negro League game. Kendrick and a panel of city officials unveiled plans to build a new 30,000-square-foot facility adjacent to the Buck O’Neil Education and Research Center, which will be housed in the former Paseo YMCA where Andrew “Rube” Foster established the Negro Leagues in 1920.
The new facility will create a “Negro Leagues Campus” and hopes to become the gateway into Kansas City’s famed Historic 18th & Vine District. The new museum space will feature state-of-the-art technology that will be used to promote diversity, inclusion, and equity through the lens of America’s unsung baseball heroes who overcame tremendous social adversity to play baseball.
Three times as large as the current museum space, the new facility will allow the NLBM to expand programming, create dynamic interactive displays, house a gallery to showcase new exhibitions, feature a larger gift shop, and include a more expansive archival and storage space.
Kendrick says the museum’s record-breaking turnout of over 14,000 visitors during Black History Month this year highlighted the need for a bigger space. The new campus will allow for better visitor experiences by providing more room to display artifacts and exhibits and house more visitors comfortably.
The NLBM opened in 1990 as a single-room office and moved twice before relocating to its current building, where it shares space with the American Jazz Museum.
Kendrick expressed his gratitude to Bank of America, which donated $1 million to the project. However, the NLBM is still seeking more donations to reach its $25 million goal.