Thursday, August 19, 1999
Country Day makes 1-year move
Temporary facility built
BY CHRISTINE WOLFF
The Cincinnati Enquirer
INDIAN HILL — It's brand-new, and bigger, better and fresher-smelling than the old building it replaces. But 11 months from now, it, too, will disappear from the Cincinnati Country Day School campus.
Country Day's newest facility is designed to be temporary, though its steel beams, foundation, concrete fire walls and 30,000 square feet of space give it the solid feel of permanence. Named the “Academic Village,” it's a collection of 42 modular units and the home — for this school year only — of Country Day's 290 ninth-through-12th-graders.
The old, one-story Upper School was demolished in July. In the large hole it left behind, a new Upper School is under construction — a three-level, 95,000-square-foot building that will nearly double the size of the old school.
The quality of the temporary school — at a cost of $1.4 million — was deliberate, said Charles Clark, headmaster of the 73-year-old pri vate school on Given Road.
“The board said very clearly that they wanted a facility as good, if not better, for the temporary site,” Mr. Clark said. “This is a whole school. Our seniors need to be in a place they can like.”
The village's 25 classrooms include space for art and music, science laboratories, a faculty lounge, library, student and faculty restrooms, and “10 times more "social space,'” said Tom Main, upper school principal.
“These digs are much better — from the width of the hallways, the quality of the bathrooms, the central air, the fresh smell,” he said.
Gone with the demolished school — a hodgepodge collection of additions dating from the 1940s — is its characteristic musty smell, Country Day officials said.
Academically, the school known for student achievement remains unchanged, Mr. Main said. “We wanted to take the current education program and plug it in here,” he said.
The modular school is under one roof, with hallways forming an “H” shape. The H's crossbar will be a 1,364-square-foot student commons furnished with couches.
The temporary school was custom-designed and leased from the West Chester office of Williams Scotsman, a Baltimore-based company. The size and time demands — classes begin Sept. 1 — made the Country Day project unique, said Rick Lewis, with Williams Scotsman.
“The timetable was very tight. They had to start demolition and had to know this would be ready for students,” Mr. Lewis said, whose West Chester office each year does one or two projects of this size around Greater Cincinnati.
When completed in fall 2000, the $20 million Upper School will include a 530-seat theater, a commons area and art gallery, a 400-seat dining hall and a science center with five laboratories. One thing old survived the wrecking ball and has become part of the new Academic Village: gray, dented lockers lining the hallways.
Students asked to keep them so that the Class of 2000 could continue the tradition of painting lockers the colors of their future colleges.
County to pay for new radio system
This mom beat the odds - and City Hall
70 years, 1 question: What makes us tick?
Former principal under suspicion
No challengers for county judgeships
Bodies from river crash found
Father asks help in finding daughter
Shooting victims ask for prayers
Getting off welfare gets easier
'Longest garage sale' starts today
Cop accused of tampering with evidence quits
Gun-toting student to be sentenced
Schools in search of subs
Timing tangles city tax vote
Training center tops N. Ky. wish list
Woman's killing ends a life adrift
County plan charts development
Dayton decision to rezone street a real clunker
How to help earthquake victims
Politically incorrect? Stand in line
State fair beckons exhibitors
Attorney starts 2002 re-election bid
GET TO IT
Improved Pap test resisted by insurers
Butler Co. voters to decide 9 non-school levies
Candidate Bush on inner-city tour today
Country Day makes 1-year move
Drug use starting to fall among teens
Face on video, appearance in court lead to arrest
Federal judge lets Klan march in Cleveland
Levies approved for ballot
Most of suit vs. Hamilton thrown out
New levy for police on ballot
Ohio looks at violence in schools
Pioneer Village seeks helping hand
Schools told math, science need work
Silverton to welcome new official
Stadium finds new life as a lake reef
TRISTATE DIGEST
