WINDSOR — The American Precision Museum now has the nearly $3 million it needs to renovate its second floor into a learning laboratory, called the Gene Haas Center for Manufacturing Inspiration.
The new space, which is scheduled to open this December, will be focused on “STEM+M” activities — Science, Technology, Engineering, Math plus Manufacturing. The newly renovated, roughly 4,800-square-foot space will include a STEM + M lab, with milling machines, lathes, lasers, 3D printers and fabrication equipment.
“Our goal quite simply is to instill in young learners that manufacturing offers great careers and opportunities,” Executive Director Steve Dalessio said in a Monday phone interview. “What we’re trying to do is ‘catch them young, catch them early’ as we like to say.”
In addition to the STEM+M lab, there will also be classroom space and room that groups can use to host conferences and community meetings.
The expanded space will allow the organization to host more educational programs including hands-on workshops, summer camp programs and after-school programs, Dalessio said.
“We know from studies that kids in fourth, fifth and sixth grades begin to formulate ideas of what they want to do, so by instilling thoughts of manufacturing at that early age we hope to help with the workforce pipeline later on,” he said.
The American Precision Museum is located at 196 Main St. in downtown Windsor in the three-story Robbins & Lawrence Armory, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. The first floor is primarily used as exhibition space. Prior to the renovation, the second floor was used as storage space for part of the museum’s collection, Dalessio said. The third floor is also used as storage space.
The nonprofit organization has been thinking about renovating its second floor “as an idea of how we can expand the useful space of the museum” for years, Dalessio said. The museum collects historic machines and other equipment related to manufacturing.
Plans began in earnest in 2023 when the museum received $500,000 from the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development’s Community Recovery and Revitalization Program. The remaining money for the project came from private donations.
The museum met its $2.8 million goal established in its fundraising campaign called “Floor 2 The Future” earlier this month, Dalessio said. The Gene Haas Foundation — a California-based nonprofit organization that supports manufacturing education programs throughout the United States — donated $1 million to the project last fall, which allowed the organization to begin construction.
The biggest part of the project — installing an elevator — started last October and was completed this month.
“The rest of it is the framing of the walls,” Dalessio said.
The American Precision Museum is currently open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit americanprecision.org. Admission costs $12 for adults; $10 for adults 65 and older; and $7 for children ages 6 to 18. Children younger than 6 can visit the museum for free.
