The National Corvette Museum announced a groundbreaking on Thursday for its largest and most significant addition since 2009: a standalone, 66,000-square-foot facility dedicated to the museum’s continually increasing collection of Corvettes and Corvette artifacts.
“This new standalone facility is purpose-built to ensure the highest preservation standards and public access to Corvette history,” said Ryan Eichler, the museum’s director of marketing and communications.
The current 115,000-square-foot museum provides a host of programming and currently rotates through 123 Corvettes for its display space, but that space is limited to about 40 Corvettes at once, Eichler said. In contrast, the new facility will provide room for the additional 83 Corvettes, upcoming growth as more Corvettes are donated in the future, and room to take on many more preservation projects — including rotating displays and a space where people can see the museum team preserving and restoring Corvettes, Eichler said.
Anticipated to open in fall 2026, with public access and tours available in 2027, the facility will be located just south of the museum at a large field it uses for event parking, Eichler said. Nothing in the current museum will be disturbed or closed off due to construction, he added.
While the museum isn’t sharing the total budget at this point, it has raised $2.1 million, which Eichler said is a sizable piece of the cost.
Beyond the museum’s appeal to Corvette and car lovers, it’s a U.S. history museum as well as a science and technology museum, Eichler said.
“You think back to 1953 when that first Corvette was produced, and just the trajectory of American pop culture and American technology and performance,” Eichler said. “That’s all really grown up with the Corvette, and I’d say in many cases Corvette’s been leading the way with so many technological advances through those decades. We offer something for everybody.”
The museum pointed to a 1967 Corvette Sting Ray once owned by astronaut Neil Armstrong that was recently donated to the museum.
(Photo: Rendering of the lobby of the new Corvette Museum building, courtesy of Kentucky Today)
By Tom Latek, Kentucky Today
