UPDATE 01/26/10
President Richard O’Hara sits in former Vice Principal of Activities Gayle McAdams’s office, flipping through a full color packet of architects’ renderings of the proposed master facilities plan. Enthusiastically he points out the aspects: the “learning center” to take the place of the library, the stadium, complete with lights and turf, the Grotto to the Blessed Mother as an on-campus retreat.
“[The master plan] is bold, it is ambitious, and represents a very hopeful future for John Carroll. It’s a challenge that will require hard work and support of many people, but any meaningful challenge is worth tackling for the sake of the next generation of students,” said O’Hara.
According to O’Hara, before the master facilities plan was created, “bits and pieces” of campus renovations were planned, including “initial thought given to the cafeteria.”
Ultimately, the plan was a “Board [of Trustees] and administration decision,” said O’Hara. The decision was made to proceed with the master plan in May 2008.
That summer, the campus was studied, which involved analyzing square footage. The “highlight” of that summer, said O’Hara, was an August meeting where the Board’s master plan committee invited faculty, staff, and students to “brainstorm possible options to see priorities. It was a big part of finding out what part of the school to renovate. We got a core idea about what’s on peoples’ minds.”
The preliminary master plan was created in September of 2008 and sent to the archdiocese at the end of that year. O’Hara said, “We were asked to make changes. [The archdiocese] wanted greater cohesiveness of the plan and evidence of our Catholicity. They thought we had tremendous vision, but wanted the plan to match that vision. It was approved in concept.”
In February 2009, the final plan was presented and, according to O’Hara, “unanimously approved by the archdiocese’s building commission.”
The reason behind the plan is “to really take John Carroll to new heights. We are moving towards excellence in all respects,” said O’Hara.
In the academic arena, “We’re not set up for learning in the 21st century way. We need a much improved facility to support a modern educational program,” said O’Hara.
Other reasons include improving the quality of life in the school building and giving enhanced facilities to the art and academic programs.
However, a key need is from a “practical standpoint,” according to O’Hara. “We have significant competition from public schools with state of the art modern facilities, and we can’t compete right now.”
The renovations are part of a goal to do “everything possible to ensure the long term progress and survival of the school. The master facilities plan is one aspect of that,” said O’Hara.
UPDATE 01/06/10
A current estimate of the cost of the school’s master facilities plan is $35 million, according to trustee emeritus Gus Brown, who has been “involved significantly in planning to raise money, soliciting funds, and helping to strategize for the department of institutional advancement.”
“The cost was based on about a 10 year project to get everything done. It was calculated on what the likely cost would be in future dollars,” said President Richard O’Hara.
The estimate was originally done in the spring/summer of 2008. O’Hara said, “We were getting a pretty good idea of the cost estimates in the summer of ’08.”
In addition, the Board has sought the advice of professional fundraising planners to determine the possibility of such an endeavor.
According to Brown, nine months ago, the Board hired the Sheridan Group to do a detailed study to determine if raising the money was plausible.
The results that came back were “positive,” but he said, “We [the Board] are going to have to be creative about financing a portion of what we do. The question is what portion is that going to be, and that will be determined by what priority the Board gives to what part of the facility.”
The decision about what will be addressed first in the plan is still in question.
“It’s a chicken and egg kind of problem: do you raise money and then find out by raising money, based on the amount that you’ve raised, what you want to prioritize as the facility to attack first, or do you identify the facility first and then raise money to go after it. It probably is the latter,” said Brown.
Much of the fundraising will be accomplished through the Board of Trustee’s Institutional Advancement subcommittee.
Currently, the committee is in the preliminary stages of entering a capital campaign to raise the funds, or in “a pre-public fundraising effort,” according to Brown.
Co-chair of the committee Larry Burton, Class of ’80, said, “We’re looking at alumni that may have the ability to provide a significant gift to the school to ascertain how much of the plan we may be able to execute. At this point, we’re just trying to get handle on how much money we think we can raise over the next three to five years and what that will allow us to do in terms of the overall master facilities plan.”
Possible solutions are being considered, but “we have to be mindful of what permission we get from the archdiocese,” said Brown. “In other words, are we going to be able to borrow part of what we need from an archdiocesan fund? Are we going to be flexible enough to get the approval of the archdiocese to borrow some money from a commercial institution? Is the archdiocese going to approve a bond issuance?”
For Burton, however, his primary goal for his time on the Board is to see “us raise sufficient funds to be able to execute all of the master facilities plan. It’s a pretty grand vision, but that would be my ultimate goal: to spur alumni, corporations, foundations to help pay for this next generation school that we’re hoping to construct.”
Although the foremost question is that of how to raise the necessary funds, Brown said, “The facilities plan is a totally comprehensive use of the entire campus and how it will look over the course of time.”
Many of the individual aspects of the plan are unknown because, said Beirne, “It’s an overall picture, not a detailed design.”
About when the design and development will begin, O’Hara said, “I don’t know the specific date because that’s a financial issue. It involves a significant outlay of money to contract with an architect.”
ORIGINAL POST 12/16/09
After the school’s master plan was unveiled in the spring, the Board of Trustees is reviewing how the time line of the plan will unfold and how money will be raised.
The plan, said Board of Trustees chairwoman Sister Mary Helen Beirne, “is what is best for the 72 acres. The desire is inclusivity so that everything is connected and so that our Catholic faith is central.”
According to Sr. Beirne, construction is slated to begin “before the 50th anniversary [of the school],” but the Board still has yet to “finalize how to do it. It could be a 15 year project.”
“The Archdiocese specifies that before we start construction, we have to have 50 percent of the money needed in hand. The hope is that we could possibly begin construction sometime in 2012. This is probably going to take the better part of the decade to get the whole master plan completed,” said President Richard O’Hara.
When questioned about the plausibility of such a timeline, O’Hara said, “I think we have a good shot at it. It depends on a lot of factors. I choose to be optimistic. Failure is not an option.”
However, the order in which the different elements of the plan are to be implemented centers around what is “least disruptive to the day to day operations,” said Sr. Beirne.
“These elements all have to be phased so you first of all minimize disruption to the program and you certainly eliminate any safety concerns. We don’t want students having to wear hard hats. So minimize disruptions to our whole curriculum, academics, arts, athletics, everything. Eliminate danger to those that are here. And then factor in what are some priorities in terms of buildings,” said O’Hara.
Although the cost is unknown, O’Hara said, “It’s a multimillion dollar endeavor. We won’t know the exact amount until we know absolutely that we’re going to move forward and to what extent we’re going to move forward. We won’t have that fully determined until around September 1, 2010.”
However, in matters of getting the funds, O’Hara said, “With great optimism and great confidence and faith, we are certainly preceding on the assumption that we will move forward with the capital campaign to bring to life the master plan.”
Although the master plan was approved by the archdiocese in February, the capital campaign has not been. “When the time is right, before we officially launch a campaign, we have to have archdiocesan approval,” said O’Hara.
How to achieve such monetary support is “being discussed now at the Board level. Part of it involves reengaging or engaging many prospective donors from the extended John Carroll family, and also from people who could help us who may not even know what John Carroll is at this point,” said O’Hara.
Currently, the Board is “doing a lot of groundwork right now, reaching out to a lot of people that haven’t been reached out to, and identifying new potential donors. There will be, as part of this advanced gift phase, a campaign to get 100 percent participation from the Board of Trustees. We have it for the annual giving, which is what we ask for every year to help run the school.”
However, “We’re not going to get all the money from fundraising, so we’re exploring what would be some options to finance the project, [like] borrowing and bond financing. We’re also taking to other schools that have had campaigns in recent years to see what financing options work well for them.”
In addition, the plan is not “building for building’s sake. There is a strategic theme,” said Sr. Beirne. The theme is “include, connect, and integrate Catholic values in symbol.”
“The Patriot” has already broken down aspects of the school’s proposed master plan. Check out the previous installments below and stay tuned for the next installment: academic and media areas.
Kate Froehlich can be reached for comment at [email protected].
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