The Natural History Museum Is Leaving Seabright for a While. It Hasn't Left Yet.
The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History is moving to 1339 Pacific Avenue so its home at 1305 East Cliff Drive can be restored and expanded. Its visit page still lists regular hours in Seabright, its calendar still books programs on East Cliff through December, and the downtown space won't hold its grand opening until spring 2027. The move is staged in steps over months, and the downtown storefront has a job beyond holding the collection while the building is closed. The museum calls it a place to try out ideas for the permanent exhibits that will return to Seabright.
So you get three versions of this museum over the next few years: the one on East Cliff right now, a free test version on Pacific Avenue, and a rebuilt Seabright building shaped partly by what the test version teaches.
The museum's visit page lists 1305 E Cliff Dr. as open Tuesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed Mondays. These are the programs posted for the weeks after this post goes up:
The Halloween listing says "FREE with admission." Admission matters here because the downtown site won't charge it. The museum says the Pacific Avenue location will open with no admission fee and will encourage donations. So the Seabright galleries as they stand now are the version you pay to enter. The interim version will be free.
The museum calls the new space the Downtown Field Station. It plans a Museum Store there, along with exhibits and rotating displays of local natural history and art. As of the museum's October 2 update, the schedule has two steps. It hopes to run retail pop-ups this holiday season, and the grand opening of the store and exhibits is set for spring 2027. Hours are still listed as "TBD."
The museum describes the site as "across the street from the Santa Cruz Roasting Company." It also plans to join downtown's First Friday with rotating nature-inspired art, which puts the museum on the monthly art-walk circuit for the first time in this setup.
Several programs don't depend on either building. The museum says it will keep leading field trips in nature and in schools, will run nature-based summer camps at locations still to be named, and is working out lectures and workshops with partners who may co-host.
The space came through the City of Santa Cruz's Downtown Pops! initiative. The museum says that milestone "will allow us to break ground on our expansion in spring of 2027."
According to the city's Downtown Pops! page, the city master-leases vacant downtown commercial spaces, mostly on Pacific Avenue, and guarantees the property owners a minimum rent. It then subleases the spaces to pop-up tenants for six months. Tenants pay rent based on a percentage of monthly sales, and the program offers up to six months of free Cruzio internet and a $1,000 tenant-improvement grant. The city lists Santa Cruz Gear Exchange at 1306 Pacific Ave. as a current participant. Past participants include Santa Cruz Mountain Makers Market, Collective Santa Cruz, M.K. Contemporary Art and RREVV.
Lookout Santa Cruz reported in May that the former Palace Art & Office Supply and Logos Books & Records storefronts had joined the program and hosted holiday markets and events during the 2025 Christmas season. It also reported that the museum's 1339 Pacific location had been approved as a temporary outpost.
Finding a temporary home was a large part of the project's cost, not a side errand. The campaign booklet lists a working project budget of $20,000,000, marked "subject to change." Its allocation chart gives 67% to the building, 22% to temporary relocation, 5.5% to design and 5.5% to installation. On that provisional budget, more than one dollar in five goes to the years spent downtown. That helps explain why the museum is planning to fill those years with exhibits instead of just storing the collection.
The museum says plainly that the field station will "recreate some of our most iconic exhibits, and reinterpret many of the amazing specimens from our collections," and that the space is "an opportunity to test out new concepts for the future permanent exhibits." The building those exhibits are being tested for will look quite different from the one on East Cliff today.
The city's project page for 1305 East Cliff Drive describes the plan. It restores the original historic Carnegie Library building and remodels and expands the non-historic sections added in the 1960s. It adds about 5,000 square feet for a community room, lobby, offices, restrooms and collections storage, and it rebuilds the outdoor amphitheater in the same spot to improve access around the park and to the whale sculpture.
The museum's Bright Future campaign page lists more. Foundation repairs and new HVAC, air filtration, plumbing, electrical and fire suppression systems. More ADA-compliant pathways, parking and entrances, plus an elevator. A purpose-built classroom and event space, so education programs and community events can happen alongside regular museum hours. A permanent space for rotating exhibits, which the museum says will invite repeat visits. And an exhibit design that reaches into the Garden Learning Center, so visitors can see the region's native plants "even when the Museum is closed."
That last item changes how Tyrrell Park will feel on a Monday or after 5 p.m. The garden becomes part of the exhibit, and you won't need the doors open to see it.
The project has cleared its main approvals. Last fall it was approved by the Historic Preservation Commission and the Planning Commission and received entitlement in October 2025. In April 2026 the museum signed a 50-year lease with the City of Santa Cruz and picked ABA Studios for architecture and design and Bogard Construction as its design-build partners. The museum points to the Aptos Branch Library as an example of that team's work. Earlier, on March 25, 2025, the City Council waived permit and building fees for the campaign, so donor money doesn't go to city fees.
The museum gives its timeline as a range. It says it will stay in the temporary location for "2-3 years to complete the construction and move back into our main Seabright location," with groundbreaking planned for spring 2027.
The whale is the piece of this project most Eastside residents see every week. The museum completed the restoration of the sculpture and reopened it to the public on June 18, 2025, in Tyrrell Park between the museum and Seabright State Beach. The city's planning report from October 2025 says the whale stays in the project design and that access to it will improve. The city's project page says the museum will keep maintaining the learning garden around the building. Neither document says how people will reach the whale, the garden or the park paths while construction is underway.
Some winter events already happen away from the building. The most recent Fungus Fair ran January 9 through 11, 2026, at London Nelson Community Center, not at the museum.
For now, Seabright holds regular hours, the Halloween mask table runs on the 31st, and Saturdays in the Soil meets at Tyrrell Park on November 21 and December 19.
If you're in Seabright and wondering how a multi-year project on East Cliff could affect your block, or you want to talk through Eastside timing before you list or buy, I'm happy to share what I'm seeing. I'm Jessyka Sommers with Jessyka Sommers. Let's Connect.
I am committed to guiding you every step of the way—whether you're buying a home, selling a property, or securing a mortgage. Whatever your needs, I've got you covered.
301 Capitola Ave Capitola, CA 95010