The Washington region has technically been home to a children’s museum for 45 years, but for the past decade it’s been pretty hard to find.

A brief backstory: In 1974, the Capital Children’s Museum opened in an old brick nunnery near Union Station. Congress rechristened it the National Children’s Museum in 2003. A developer purchased its building a year later and museum operated as a “museum without walls” for the next five years. Then, it reemerged in 2009 in a small preview space in National Harbor. Three years after that, it upgraded to a storefront there, but shuttered again in 2015.

At that point, its board promised it would return the institution to Washington, D.C. Still following?

The saga ends, ostensibly, this November. The National Children’s Museum is scheduled to reopen in a 33,000-square foot space in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest.

“When we reopen, we will really be a science center and a children’s museum in one,” said Crystal Bowyer, the museum’s president and CEO.

She was wearing a white construction hat and looking around at what will eventually be the science and technology-focused museum’s entrance hall. Its pièce de résistance will be the “dream machine,” a 50-foot slide and climbing structure that children can use to enter the museum.

“I knew that we needed something magical at the point of entry,” Bowyer said with her trademark combination of fun mom-speak and developer jargon. She was thrilled when she got the go-ahead last year to knock out a major section of the floor of what used to be a steakhouse to build the two-story contraption.

The original Capital Children’s Museum of the 1970s was known for homey, tactile attractions like taco-making and giant bubble wands.

Not so with the new iteration. Its exhibitions will all be STEAM-focused—science, technology, engineering, arts, and math—with an emphasis on combined digital and hands-on learning aimed at children up to the age of 12.

Programming will include everything from an interactive exhibit that allows kids to control the weather through a green screen, to a slime-themed area sponsored by the children’s television network Nickelodeon. According to a rendering, it’ll include a “slime wheel,” “tactile floor,” “overhead inflatables,” and something called a “randomized splat and ooze projection theater.”

In Data Science Alley, kids will learn about data collection, data footprints, and social media. Over in the Engineering, Games and Play section, older children will be able to design cars and manipulate race tracks as part of a design-build challenge, while younger kids amuse themselves in a gymnastics-themed zone.

There will also be quiet areas for children with sensory sensitivities or autism and private rooms that mothers can use to breastfeed and pump.

They’re also bringing back the bubble room. The decision came after surveying Washingtonians about their favorite experiences at the original museum. Unsurprisingly, the opportunity to create a giant bubble around yourself ranked right at the top.

Bowyer is still in the midst of raising the $15 million needed to open the museum. She said she’s “very close” to the goal but declined to specify exact figures. If needed, she said, the museum could always take out a line of credit to complete construction on schedule.

The money that’s already come in hails from individual donors, corporations, philanthropies, and the D.C. government, which contributed $1 million in grant funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is sponsoring 80 field trips for low-income schools, including the price of entry, bus transportation and lunches.

The financial struggles of other private museums in Washington aren’t lost on Bowyer. She said her institution is a stable position because it’s renting space from the federal government rather than constructing a new building, as had once been the plan.

Still, she sees the Newseum as a cautionary tale. Even though it attracted more than 800,000 visitors a year, the Newseum recently announced it would be selling its flagship building on Pennsylvania Avenue.

“It’s unfortunate when you see that happen, but luckily that won’t be a problem here,” Bowyer said.

The National Children’s Museum is scheduled to open in November 2019. Tickets will cost $10.95.

This story was originally published on WAMU.