This extraordinary undertaking, moving to a new wholly-owned school building! If you haven’t seen it yet, come, take a tour (contact Bethany Schultz, Summers-Knoll’s Project Director for the move, at bethanys@summers-knoll.org ). Bring your friends and family. It is an amazing place & location and has vibrations of beauty and learning and cooperation in the walls and windows and hallways. I felt this the first time I entered, even with peeling corners in the old part, at one time a dairy! With that section now demolished from the inside, the feel of the architecture is even more exciting. The dreams are coming to reality from what has been envisioned by our head of school, by the board, by the teachers, the staff, the parents and by the children! to be our new school building.
What a privilege to be part of this transition.
The purchasing of the building (land contract, so it isn’t really ours quite yet) made possible through the hard work of the board, and most especially, our angel parent who navigated the agreement with the Michigan Gift of Life owners. This building had sat patiently for three years on the slow market, just waiting for Summers-Knoll to seize the opportunity, which also came about because of substantial other events that transpired last year.
Giving credit where credit is due
Meanwhile an extraordinary architectural firm, Angelini & Associates, Architects, has planned, dreamed, revised, produced drawings after drawings, met with all the constituents and listened to our needs and desires. They and we are now working with Phoenix Construction, both with the initial demolition and with the build-out construction that is about to begin. We have been given hours and hours of volunteer or in-kind work, from the grounds-keeping work provided by Ron Weiser’s company, to technical support by Dan Pritts, design ideas and implementation by Linette Lao, Thomas Livernois’ assistance with the façade and repair, Dan Blakeney’s incredible videography, as well as a year of planning by both this year’s Board of Directors (our school trustees), Fran Loosen, Paul Schutt, Matt Berg, Karen Godwin, Mark Stranahan (who also provided an huge amount of contextual building design ideas), and last year’s board members, Todd Austin, Laura Wagner and Anthony Nitsos, as well as Building Committee Members: Fran Loosen, Mark Stranahan, Mark Moellering, Matt Berg and Bethany Schultz, plus our the members on the Finance Committee, Patrick Thornton and Dan Pritts, in addition to Matt Berg, Joanna, and myself. Also the Tech Committee, headed up by Dan Pritts, with the help of Mark Moellering, Becky Trombley Domegan, Linh Song, and the Capital Campaign Committee, in formation now, headed by Fran Loosen, and with Linh Song, Jenn Monk-Reising and additional board members. Gwen Harrigan has provided background support, along with JoLynn Montgomery; and a WONDERFUL crew including Anne Leo, Robbin Hitchins, Rosie Bellovan, Trinh Pham, Mickey Arvoy and, again, Mark Stranahan scrubbed and cleaned and tore down on our first cleanup day. Please forgive me if I have left any of our dedicated volunteers out of this listing. I believe there have likely been substantial other individual contributions, and truly, I regret if I have not given each her or his due.
What else makes this possible? The money, of course!
We have been given extremely generous donations, anonymously, the foundation of our coming Capital Campaign that is being planned for implementation by Jenn Monk-Reising and the Development Committee. In addition to receiving grants, we have a very generous long-term loan from a local foundation, and this week we are signing a Loan/Line of Credit with United Bank and Trust to help underwrite the construction costs. We are continuing to operate the school with carefully budgeted funds, very lean, to say the least. The assistance of parent volunteers in so many areas of the school allows us to keep to our budget. This is the backbone of our community and the Summers-Knoll culture.
We received many times their worth of Border’s beautiful furniture and fixtures as they were closing. Bethany continues to find generosity from others of both their time and donated goods for the building, a host of offerings.
Because of the generosity of one of our benefactors, we will be able to sell our current Manchester building (itself a gem) when we move into the new location on Platt, and we will be in the position to repay a good amount of the immediate borrowed money.
The envisioning, also, is wonderful to hear and to be a part of.
What will the classrooms look like? How will the children go in and out of the building? Where will the middle school students find safe spaces for their own relaxation/learning? How will the staff interact with the classrooms and the central locations? Where do the telephone and data wires go? How will the internet work? Hurrah! We can still use County Farm Park, just from the East side! Where will parking, pickup & dropoff be? How much larger a summer camp will we have? How will we use the lunchroom and kitchen? Where is storage? There are windows everywhere! There is a central enclosed courtyard garden with a Japanese maple and other lovely small trees and plantings.
Each piece of this project has been extremely well considered, discussed, revised and determined. We are almost to our initial goal when we will MOVE IN!!!
And we have many more exciting plans for the future, especially concerning community involvement, yet to come.
Please also see http://skcommons.blogspot.com/ for Bethany’s blog about the changing building.
