ND Heritage Center Construction Update - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

ND Heritage Center Construction Update

The Heritage Center Expansion project is taking shape.

They hope to open the new front doors by early summer, and one of the new galleries by late summer.

While you can see what's happening outside as construction continues, Tom Gerhardt gives you a look at what's happening inside.

Workers are on the move inside the Heritage Center.

And a quick peak outside shows work is underway on the new entrance.

"Over the next few weeks we'll see the steel go up for the big glass box up front which is gonna be pretty spectacular to watch and the big glass doors in the galleries are going in as you can see painting is happening in the galleries now, there is collection shelving going in downstairs so it's a very busy construction site," says Claudia Berg.

From the auditorium to the new cafe, Berg says there are several things she is looking forward to seeing, including the new galleries.

Chris Johnson is the director of the Museum Division. He says the first gallery to open will be the "dinosaur gallery." This photo shows what the room will look like when it's finished.

"In here your gonna see all kinds of fossil specimens from very small snails and pieces that small up to T-Rex and Triceratops so from the small to the very large types of fossils will be in here," says Chris Johnson.

Another of the things Johnson about in this gallery is an under water world exhibit.

"If you've ever been in an aquarium and you walk through and see the fish swimming overhead we want to try to capture some of that, the feeling of if you were swimming amongst some of these marine mammals that were from millions of years ago, would you have gotten eaten or something like that," says Johnson.

The "dinosaur gallery" will be the first of the new galleries to open to the public. Johnson says the hope is to have the doors open by late summer.

The other galleries will open in phases. The entire project should be finished by 2014, with a grand re-opening scheduled in coordination with North Dakota's 125th birthday.