Staff for the Durango Discovery Museum is calling it the “best worst” timing.

The education and science museum, which has been in the works for years, received its largest donation to date just a week before a sneak-peak public preview.

The estimated opening date now is mid-December, instead of mid-November.

“We were working feverishly toward this week’s preview events and now, while the construction window is open, we must take advantage of the opportunity to get even more done – and done right,” museum officials said in an e-mail to supporters announcing the donation.

The extra cash makes it possible to make improvements planned for the future but means the public will not be able to tour the renovated Powerhouse building where exhibits will be housed during Friday’s preview.

Instead, the preview will be held on the plaza outside the building. It will feature an interpretive dance by students from Fort Lewis College, a “Science of Skate” workshop and an exploration of fractals.

The power plant, located on Camino del Rio just south of its junction with Main Avenue, was built in 1893 shortly after Durango’s founding and was one of the first steam-powered alternating-current plants in the country.

It had been shut down for decades and faced possible demolition when the city signed a deal to lease the space for a museum that emphasizes energy and science.

Phase I, which included exterior renovation and environmental remediation at the site, was completed a couple of years ago for about $1.1 million.

Since then, organizers have been busy with Phase II, which included drawing up designs, planning exhibits and raising funds.

The anonymous donation, which was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, put funding for Phase II of the project at 100 percent. The total cost of this phase of construction is $2 million.

So far, a huge wooden and steel tree-shaped structure is the only major addition to the powerhouse building.

Haz Saïd, the museum’s director of marketing and communications, in an interview inside the renovated powerhouse, formed outlines of future exhibits with his hands. One, he explained with arms hugging an imaginary cylinder, will be a huge tube that will reach the ceiling and funnel sunlight down to a work station. Participants will be able to use mirrors to direct the sunlight onto solar-activated cars or mobiles.

Another station will be a 3-D digital screen of the world with real-time images of the weather sweeping across it.

Debra Moseley-Lord, the museum’s exhibit manager, said, “I hope kids walk away (from the museum) with a little bit more of a sense of wonder and a willingness to delve in and explore the world.”

When the museum opens to the public, there will be about 50 different activities and exhibits, Saïd said.

Besides providing entertainment and education, interactive science programming like the museum’s also can help augment what the schools are doing, Saïd said.

“We do engineering, science and technology education that schools don’t have the resources to do these days,” he said.

Durango School District 9-R Superintendent Keith Owen said faculty and administrators are ecstatic about the museum’s upcoming opening. The district plans to arrange for students to visit the museum and have access to its programming and also bring guest speakers from the museum into classrooms, he said.

After his walk-through of the powerhouse building, Saïd stopped to admire a designer’s sketch of the finished Discovery Museum, with big glass and brick additions to the original building. The finished product is years away, but opening is a significant milestone.

“We’ve been working on this vision for a lot of years, and now we’re days away rather than months and years,” he said. “It’s gonna be pretty awesome.”

ecowan@ durangoherald.com