Greensboro Science Center’s Biodome takes shape with steel trusses

Steel trusses rising at the Greensboro Science Center have turned the long-promised Biodome from a rendering into a structure people can finally see, but the project still has months of construction left before the center says it will open in fall 2027.

The latest visible milestone came as workers installed massive steel trusses at the future rainforest attraction, giving the clearest look yet at the outline of the five-story dome on the Lawndale Drive campus. The Greensboro Science Center has tied that opening target to its 70th anniversary, a symbolic deadline for an institution that began in 1957 as the Greensboro Junior Museum.

Expedition Rainforest combines the Biodome with the Aquatic Rehabilitation and Conservation Center, or ARCC, and the center says the complex is designed to do more than add another exhibit. Project materials describe the Biodome as a five-story rainforest ecosystem experience that will immerse guests in the sights, sounds and scale of a tropical habitat while supporting conservation and education work through immersive animal habitats and Species Survival Plan breeding programs.

The planned wildlife lineup includes sloths, toucans and clouded leopards, and earlier reporting put the Biodome at more than 32,000 square feet within a broader Expedition Rainforest site of about 65,000 square feet. The original concept also called for more than 200 animals from South America, Asia and Africa, underscoring how large the project is compared with a typical exhibit renovation.

The timing matters because the Science Center has spent years selling the project as both an attraction and an economic engine for Greensboro. WFMY previously reported a goal of 750,000 annual guests and $100 million in annual economic impact, a jump from the more than 600,000 guests the center drew in fiscal 2022-23 and the as-high-as 635,000 annual visitors reported after Revolution Ridge opened in 2021. The center’s leaders are betting that a rainforest dome will push the campus deeper into the regional tourism market and keep more families spending time, and money, in Greensboro.

Public dollars are already part of that bet. City leaders directed $20 million from a parks and recreation bond toward the Greensboro Science Center Gateway vision, linking the Biodome to a broader public investment strategy rather than a private attraction upgrade. Samet is building Expedition Rainforest in partnership with Lindsey Architecture and CambridgeSeven.

The latest truss work changes the conversation from plans to a physical structure, but the hardest part is still ahead: finishing the dome, the ARCC and the rest of the campus work on schedule. Earlier projections had pointed to completion by April or May 2027 and a summer opening, showing how much the timeline has already shifted before the first guests ever step inside.