Mystic — Mystic Seaport held a groundbreaking ceremony Thursday for an $11.5 million exhibit building that is designed to make the museum more of a year-round destination and attract traveling exhibits from museums around the world.

The coincidence of near-zero temperatures with the fulfillment of a long effort to provide visitors with new opportunities on cold weather days was not lost on museum officials and others involved in Thursday’s ceremony, as they dumped shovelfuls of freshly dumped dirt instead of actually digging into the frozen ground.

“On a cold morning like this, it’s warming to see so many people sharing this great moment with us,” Seaport President Steve White told the 75 people gathered for the outdoor ceremony before they moved inside the Latitude 41 restaurant to hear the project described in more detail.

The groundbreaking for the 14,000-square-foot Thompson Exhibit Building is the culmination of a generation-long discussion at the Seaport.

The building, which is designed to evoke feelings of the ribs of a ship and its masts, a curling wave and a wharf, is slated to open in the summer or early fall of 2016. The renovation of the adjacent quadrangle to host additional programming will be completed this June.

“This will establish us as the finest maritime museum in the nation,” said Barclay Collins, the chairman of the museum’s Board of Trustees.

White said the project builds on the inspiration of those who founded the museum 85 years ago.

He called last summer’s voyage of the newly restored whaling ship Charles W. Morgan a “manifestation of that vision” and said the new exhibit building “will be a force of a similar nature.”

The building was designed by Centerbrook Architects of Essex, and firm partner Chad Floyd detailed the objectives behind the design, which included the desire to evoke the feel of a wooden ship, conjure up an image of the sea and create a memorable building. He said the structure should not try to replicate its historical surroundings but be different from them.

The deck that overlooks the quadrangle is not there just to resemble a wharf but has a functional purpose to raise the building to the required 12 feet above flood level.

Inside, the building will have 5,000 square feet of prime exhibit space, a reception lobby, bathrooms, coat room, space for museum staff, a large mechanical room for the equipment to protect the exhibits and new space overlooking the Mystic River for the Munson Room, which will be relocated from the Stillman Building.

The project calls for demolishing the G.W. Blunt White Library building and opening up views of the museum campus, the Mystic River and the Thompson building, which will be separated from Route 27 by a small park.

White said the Seaport has raised $7 million of the $11.5 million needed for the building. He also announced during Thursday’s ceremony that the Thompson Family Foundation had just donated $1 million to the project. Wade Thompson had been a longtime museum trustee.

White said in addition to raising the remaining $4.5 million for the building, the Seaport is also seeking to raise another $4 million to fund other aspects of the project and exhibits.

Citizens Bank is providing the interim financing for the project, which will be constructed by A/Z Corp. of North Stonington. Kent + Frost Landscape Architecture of Mystic has designed that aspect of the project.

j.wojtas@theday.com

Twitter: @joewojtas