Get ready, students! Ping-pong tables, foosball, large HD flat-screens, and a new Tuck Shop with an even larger collection of smoothies, burgers, and fries are coming your way.
At last week’s school meeting, Headmaster Dr. Curtis unveiled the layout plans for the new Student Activities Center (SAC), to be called St. John Hall. The addition to the Choate campus will fit in with Hill House and the Library with its brick exterior and white steeple. St. John will be located in the same general area where the old math building, the former St. John Hall, used to be.
The new building will have many features that the SAC currently lacks. The comparatively larger building will serve as an area for student life, containing an area for school dances, places to hang out, a new Tuck Shop, and a large entry hall. Unlike the SAC now, the new building will have a game room fully equipped with not only a pool table, table tennis, and foosball, but also console games such as a Wii and an Xbox. The proposed media room will also be useful for watching movies. As Dr. Curtis noted, there will be many social areas, such as in front of the sunlit bay room on the first floor, in addition to day student lockers, more lounges, deans’ offices, and the School Store on the second floor. The third floor will be an area for the School’s publications, as well as some student study rooms and a kitchen.
St. John will directly benefit Choate’s clubs and student organizations. Before the new Lanphier Center, student club meetings were held in classrooms all throughout campus, from the Humanities Building to the Science Center. With the new St. John Hall, Dr. Curtis noted that “there should be plenty of space for clubs to meet, from small rooms to large, so that small clubs with just a few people have good-sized spaces, and the really big clubs can have good areas to be in.” Dr. Curtis explained that the small meeting rooms will also double as study rooms, and he also added that “given that we want those rooms to be used a lot, there’ll be some kind of online registration system, so if you want to reserve it for group study as well as for clubs, you can do that.”
He also mentioned that St. John will not only have places to meet, but also places for students to make things for fairs or club events. “Hopefully it will be a central point, which will make it easier for student clubs and organizations as well. I think we have a very vibrant club life, and I think it has a chance to become even better because of St. John Hall,” added Dr. Curtis.
Construction on the new features of the 37,000 square-foot St. John Student Center, designed by Bowie Gridley Architects of Washington, D.C, will last at least eighteen months, so ideally the building will be open to students by the spring of 2017.
So far, Choate has dealt with all of the foreseeable construction obstacles. Much of this has to do with the fact that the new building will be on the site of the old St. John Hall, so the School has a fairly good idea of what is underground at the site. Also, as of this point, the administration has dealt with all the permits and the zoning issues. Dr. Curtis admitted that weather and supply are certainly possible obstacles, saying “Obviously it’s going to be a big building, so there’s not just the brick and the steel that’s being used. There’s the concrete that’s going to be in there, and there’s the glass. All those things have to be ordered, and there’s always an unknown with that. There are always some things that they could proceed in another part of the building–you know if the glass is delayed, we could always work somewhere else–but if the steel is delayed, there’s nothing you can do.”
Despite some minor disturbances caused by the demolition this summer, the greater Wallingford community has been fairly supportive of the construction. “We’ve worked very closely and have formed a good communication line with our neighbors through the process. We have had meetings, listened to concerns, and tried to address those concerns,” said Dr. Curtis. So far, the school has hoped to minimize disturbance, and it has done a fairly good job. Dr. Curtis added that “As with any building project, there’s always going to be some disruption in the short run, but I think that our neighbors know that were doing everything that we can to make it manageable.” Mrs. Lorraine Connelly, the Associate Director of Communications for Marketing and Media, added that “Our neighbors have been very appreciative of the school’s efforts to include neighbors in ongoing conversations. It was very telling at the last planning and zoning meeting when one of our neighbors commented that this building was going to be a real asset to the community.”
Therefore, although the groundbreaking will begin on Friday, October 9, the new building to come will have many different aspects that the current SAC does not have. Dr. Curtis noted that this is mostly due to the efforts of Mr. James Yanelli, Director of Student Activities, saying “His thoughtfulness and his ideas and the way he has been able to reflect student input have been nothing short of inspirational.”
