ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Explora is getting ready to expand once again. Their newest and largest plans have a space for everyone from preschoolers to young adults. With phase one of its overarching ‘Cradle through Career’ project nearing completion, Explora is looking ahead to its next and biggest project to date.
“Phase one is called X-Studio and that’s a teen workforce development center That’s an 8,000-square-foot building and we hope construction will finish late spring, early summer,” said Capital Campaign Manager at Explora, Nyra Klawer.
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Nyra Klawer says the $10 million ‘Brillante’ project is in part, a science, technology, engineering art and math or STEAM-based preschool. Brillante will also be a place for young adults working toward careers in early childhood education.
“Helping teachers really figure out how to bring that to life in a different way in their own classrooms… so this will be a place that can really further that, those activities,” Klawer said.
The Brillante campus will be built across from Explora next to the Natural History Museum that is currently rented out to Array Technologies. It’s still in the planning phases right now but Klawer expects it to serve at least 125 preschoolers and have ten classrooms.
“There’s a lot of movement right now, in our state, around early childhood education and we really feel like this will give us that much more momentum for this stage of the project,” Klawer said.
Explora has already raised $1 million for Brillante but they need $10 million. They believe fundraising will take about three to four years so they’ll likely break ground on Brillante in late 2024 or early 2025.
