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A children’s museum in Salem may use a downtown Woodburn building, left dormant since an earthquake in 1993, to establish a second location.

Directors of have started talking about the idea with city officials. But Matthew Craigie, Woodburn’s economic development manager, said more discussion is needed.

鈥淭here’s a lot of interest in doing this, but it is very much in the exploratory phase,鈥� he said.

The two-story Association Building on Front Street in Woodburn never recovered from the 鈥淪pring Break Quake鈥� that struck on March 25, 1993. Damage forced Salud Medical Center, the migrant farmworker clinic that occupied the building, to relocate.

The property was condemned, and city workers gutted the 10,000-square-foot building.

“The building has been stripped down to its shell,” Craigie said.

Joanna Engle, interim director of A.C. Gilbert’s Discovery Village, stressed that the idea of a children’s museum in Woodburn in still in its infancy.

“This is very much still in the talking phase,” she said.

The idea came from Woodburn resident Kay McEwen, who was inspired after taking her grandchildren to OMSI and Discovery Village.

“With all the talent and skills that we have in Woodburn, we could put something together like that for the schoolkids 鈥� a kinesthetic approach to science, engineering, etc.,” she said. “I’m long on ideas and short on implementation skills.”

When the idea was brought to Discovery Village, board members decided to look into it.

“It’s not like we were looking to expand,” Engle said.

Nick Harville, business retention and expansion manager of , has helped board members evaluate project feasibility and the dollar figures involved.

The figures are formidable, Craigie said. The cost to renovate the building could be upwards of $1.5 million, he said, without accounting for the museum’s specific needs.

“It’s going to take considerable effort to bring it up to snuff,” he said.

The city has owned the property since 1996. Workers installed a new facade, but officials for 16 years have struggled to figure out what to do about the building’s interior. Finding a use for it is a high priority for city councilors, Craigie said; they are considering the possibility of paying for a remodel with urban renewal money.

Meanwhile, downtown Woodburn has gone through a kind of minor renaissance. Until 2005, a parking lot on the west side of the building had a notorious reputation for gang fights, drugs and prostitution. But then the lot was transformed into a Mexican-style plaza that attracted children and families.

Craigie said it would be an ideal location for a children’s museum.

“It would be wonderful, considering how Woodburn has a lot of young families,” he said.

A.C. Gilbert’s Discovery Village, near the banks of the Willamette River in Salem, started in 1989 with the renovation and relocation of the Victorian house that was the early childhood home of Alfred Carlton Gilbert (1884鈥�1961). He was born in Salem and achieved fame as the inventor of the Erector Set.

The private, nonprofit museum began as the Gilbert House, but was renamed as other renovated historic Salem buildings (including the Parrish, Rockenfield and Wilson-Durbin family homes as well as the Little Gem Grocery) were added. Interactive scientific and recreational activities are geared toward children and families.

Woodburn’s population is 58 percent Hispanic. And museum officials, McEwen said, were “looking forward to a Hispanic outreach program.”