NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – Sights and sounds of the future are all around you as you walk through the plaza outside.

Construction on the $12-million project started at the beginning of 2018, and is expected to be complete between mid-October, and the winter months.

One change you’ll see the next time you visit the Opry is the box office, which is now just across from the plaza.

“Folks will be able of course to come up and purchase tickets for tours, shows, etc right here at the Opry House, and just behind that area, we’ll have a brand new facility that will be a cinematic experience for those 200,000 or so folks who take a daytime or postshow tour throughout the year,” said Dan Rogers, Director of Marketing and Communication at the Grand Ole Opry.

The current retail space is also moving to a new 5000 square foot facility which is being built behind this construction wall.

“You’ll have a lot of customer experiences in the shop, interactive experiences and then on almost every night we have an Opry performance these days. We’ll do an in-store signing where some of country music’s most popular artists will sign their latest product either before or after the shows, so there will be more room for that sort of thing, and interactions with guests and artists who are playing the Opry show,” Rogers told News 2.

Despite the construction, the nightly shows aren’t slowing down!

Rogers said, “We’re continuing with shows at least three nights a week. We just added some second shows for various days in March due to customer demands so life’s good.”

Backstage tours will also continue during the construction.

“We’ll do three types of backstage tours throughout the year. We have shows these days Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays. We’ll do 200,000 people through on backstage tours this year alone, but we want to make sure there’s more for those folks,” said Rogers.

Since the first part of the construction will be finished by mid-October, which is the Opry’s birthday month– you can bet there will be a huge celebration!

The next big event is Chris Jansen becoming the newest Opry member on March 20th!See what’s coming up next at the Opry here