Pacific Science Center tries to survive as it plans makerspace expansion, eyes real estate deal

Seattle is a world-class tech hub. But the city’s Pacific Science Center, a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring the next generation of innovators, is fighting to stay afloat.

The former jewel of the 1962 World’s Fair needs long-deferred infrastructure upgrades estimated to cost more than $70 million. Many of its exhibit spaces are sitting empty and some house dated displays. Its attendance numbers are growing, but haven’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

“The institution’s future is not certain,” said CEO Will Daugherty.

But he and his team aren’t hanging up their lab safety goggles just yet.

PacSci is embarking on a campaign to raise $19 million to turn its popular Maker & Innovation Lab into the venue’s star attraction. It’s considering the sale of some valuable real estate holdings in the shadow of the Space Needle. It’s working on plans to renovate the iconic courtyard and ponds at the heart of the campus. And it hopes to dismantle fencing that barricades PacSci from the adjoining Seattle Center before the latter attracts hordes of FIFA World Cup fans in 2026.

The institution is publicly sharing its plans for the Maker & Innovation Lab and courtyard improvements, but staying tight-lipped on potential real estate deals.

PacSci needs to unlock new funding to sustain operations, whether through fundraising, government grants, increased revenue, or the sale of assets.

“As a mission-driven nonprofit institution that owns substantial real estate, we regularly review our assets and evaluate opportunities to improve our impact and financial sustainability,” Daugherty said. “This includes exploring the best ways to use the real estate.”

The nonprofit brought in $17.6 million in revenue in 2023, but its expenses totaled $19.6 million, according to tax records. Its total assets amount to $42.7 million, but it has debts of $13.9 million.

Jason Barnwell, a Microsoft general manager and associate general counsel, has been a PacSci board member for nearly six years. He’s impressed with Daugherty’s lean, resourceful management of the nonprofit and is pushing for outside support.

“Our community has been the beneficiaries of a lot of what PacSci has been doing, and there hasn’t been the kind of support that I would expect to show up,” Barnwell said. “There is something very special happening that people should want to be a part of.”

‘Getting your hands dirty’

Sixty-three years ago, the Seattle World’s Fair featured the U.S. Science Pavilion, dubbed a “cathedral of science” with its white buildings, plazas, and towering Gothic arches, and filled with exhibits on American discovery and innovation. Following the close of the fair, the site became the nonprofit Pacific Science Center.

PacSci evolved over the decades to include IMAX theaters, laser shows and a butterfly house. Early in the COVID pandemic it hosted some of the only in-person summer camps and quickly developed online learning when families and teachers were desperate for resources. The nonprofit has focused on bringing STEM education to underserved kids, and Amazon — headquartered just down the street — donated $1 million in 2022 for programs reaching low-income schools.

Microsoft, Google, Intellectual Ventures, and Bristol Myers Squibb are among other corporate sponsors.

When Daugherty took the science center’s helm in 2015, it included an exhibit called “Tinker Tank” for hands-on experimentation. It was a tiny space open only on the weekends.

“That’s where the magic was happening,” Daugherty said. “People were doing things in there that were creative, collaborating with each other. They were imagining and inventing things.”

He expanded the space and added weekday staffing. On another tour of the space he met a mom and her 10-year-old son, who was absorbed by an activity. Daugherty learned that the child was mentally highly capable, but struggled with executive functioning. Tinker Tank was one of the few places he thrived, compelling his mom to make the two-hour round trip every week from their South Tacoma home.

PacSci advocates see the Maker & Innovation Lab as an on-ramp to developing skills that open doors to STEM fields and fulfill a human need to create and improve the world.

“Getting your hands dirty and using tools and building up skills, solving problems, being creative — it’s empowering,” said Jeff Barr, a PacSci supporter who is a vice president and chief evangelist at Amazon Web Services.

PacSci’s vision includes expanding the existing makerspace, which currently occupies less than half of one floor of a building, plus adding new lab features that will create a 14,000-square-foot exhibit that spans three floors.

The current makerspace has desktop and large format 3D printers, a Glowforge laser cutter, vinyl cutters and different types of sewing machines. A nearby public high school comes every Wednesday to use the tools. The improved makerspace would add wood working equipment, a more advanced laser cutter, stations for soldering and electronics, digital design tools, and coding and robotics technologies.

Wei Gao, a PacSci board member and past technical advisor to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, stressed the need for kids to experiment with real-life electrical and mechanical engineering and industrial design.

“That’s often missing in this whole recent focus on AI, on digital,” Gao said. “We cannot forget that we live in a physical world. We interact with physical things. And this country, to continue being competitive at the global scale, needs to be able to make things. And that needs to start with our children.”

Aiming for an MVP

The price tag for turning the Maker & Innovation Lab into a centerpiece exhibit is an estimated $20 million. So far, the organization has $1 million from a King County grant and state lawmakers have requested another $1 million in the state budget. A private donor is giving $100,000.

While still far short of the target, work on the effort is already underway.

“You don’t wait until you have all the money to take action,” Daugherty said. “You take action, demonstrate impact, and use that to cultivate further investment. It’s the minimum viable product approach,” he added, taking a term from the startup playbook.

PacSci is juggling other capital projects as well.

The nonprofit is talking with leaders of the Seattle Center, which is owned and run by the city, about improving connectivity between the two venues. That includes removing tall gates that separate the two, creating a natural flow from the Seattle Center through PacSci to downtown.

The Seattle Center has been designated as the city’s official gathering place for fans to watch live streams of 2026 FIFA World Cup matches being played locally. The site will host additional entertainment, food and beverage sales and craft booths. It’s also home to the recently renovated Climate Pledge Arena.

PacSci needs to rehab the cobble-lined pools on the north end of the campus that have leaked millions gallons of potable water per year for decades. The work could cost between $30 million to $50 million and include shoring up the pools, installing a system to capture rainwater to fill them, making the plazas ADA compliant, and incorporating native plantings.

Selling some of PacSci’s real estate could help fund the initiatives.

In 2019, the already financially strapped organization sold an L-shaped piece of property on its southwest side for $13.9 million. The investor group that bought the site, which contains a parking garage, has proposed erecting an eight-story apartment building, according to news reports.

PacSci currently has multiple unused spaces that it can’t afford to operate, including a cafe that remains closed since the COVID pandemic.

Daugherty compares running the nonprofit and navigating these challenges to skiing black diamond and double black diamond runs — the most perilous slopes on a mountain.

“We have to be aware of the extreme challenge. But the only way to ski this run successfully,” he said, “is to lean down the hill, and to have a bold vision for what we can accomplish.”

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