Cheyenne Mayor Rick Kaysen says planning for a new Children's Museum of Cheyenne in the downtown property commonly known as "the hole" is moving ahead.

The mayor says the next step will be the building of a fence around the property which will eventually serve as a construction fence once work gets underway. He says officials are hoping work on the fence can start by late June.

He says discussions are also underway on a lease by the city of the roughly one quarter of the property that it owns to the museum group. The other 3/4 of the property, which had been owned by a Kansas company, has already been acquired by the museum board.

Planning and fundraising for the Children's Museum of Cheyenne is in the very preliminary stages and an exact timeline for opening the museum is unclear at this point. But museum backers say they would like to open sometime in 2016 if all goes well.

The property on East Lincolnway has been vacant since a fire destroyed a business which had been located there in 2005.

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