The Museum of Glass’s $22 million capital expansion project received a boost on Tuesday night as the Tacoma City Council unanimously approved a $1.25 million loan from the Community and Economic Development Special Revenue Fund. It’s a chance for the city to help preserve and expand one of the city’s civic monuments while also ensuring that it can continue to draw in glass artist and tourist to the waterfront.

As a a result of this project, a new 4,000 square foot gallery – the Lino Tagliapietra Legacy Gallery – will house 175 works that are gifted to the museum once construction is complete. The new gallery will be built in place of the existing theater in order to expand the space available to traveling exhibitions that the Museum can host. Alongside the new gallery, the existing galleries will be upgraded with modern lighting, better flow for visitors, improved environmental controls, better cases, and new onsite storage to enable growth of the Museum’s permanent exhibit items.

This loan will be repaid over a 24 month term and will have a flat 9% fee due at the time of maturity.