RE LOG Fall 2017

32 Ransom Everglades LOG FALL 2017 had to stay in Miami. She didn’t want me to leave. It was the same for my brother. Carlos got accepted to Princeton and my mom made him stay. (Carlos went to Princeton two years later as Rudy attended the University of Miami, where he received his bachelor’s degree in International Finance and Marketing.) Do you still feel that “wow”? Yes! It’s been exciting to watch Ransom Everglades rise in national stature. It’s become such a prominent school. I don’t think I could get in to Ransom Everglades now. I talk to Mr. [ Jim ] Beverley ’62 about it, and he com- pletely concurs – a little too enthusiastically. You could always take some practice SSATs. I’d need to take a lot of them. More seriously, how did being at RE help you after you left? The Ransom Everglades network is extensive. Some of my closest friends are from Ransom Everglades. I wouldn’t have gotten my first job at Cushman Wakefield if RE parents hadn’t put in a recommendation for me. I was a bank teller for the Holtz family at Capital Bank. When you go to college you do have a net- work of friends and so forth, but they touch a lot of different cities. Here, they touch one community, and one community that’s hap- pens to be growing and expanding. It’s hard not to run into people that are just one step removed from Ransom Everglades. Ransom Everglades is about to em- bark on changes that will transform its Upper School campus. How did we get to this point? You have to go back a few years. In the last decade or so, Ransom Everglades has made many improvements. The Middle School has been totally revital- ized. We have great athletics facilities, and we expanded the arts (visual arts building). What we haven’t done is brought that same rejuvenation to the math and science realm, and the humanities. There is a dire need. We need the physical plant to match the educational level. We offer a superior educa- tion and, in many places, inferior or dated facilities. About four years ago, the board put forward a plan with a footprint for a new STEM building, improvements to Ludington, a sec- ond story to the cafeteria, a new administra- tive building. The City of Miami approved it in 2014. The plan provides the opportunity for a reconstruction of nearly everything cur- rently in place. But if we were to build out to that level without additional land, we would have a very dense campus. When I went to school here, the Upper School campus housed maybe 200 kids. As we approach three times the amount of occupancy in the same parcel of land with the same academic buildings, it becomes apparent we have issues not just with aging facilities, but also with density. How does La Brisa, which was acquired in June 2016, fit in the future? The acquisition of La Brisa was, in my mind, the only proper answer to allow Ransom Everglades to provide a much-needed facelift to its facilities without losing the original feel of the campus. With La Brisa, our physical growth is not just about buildings, it’s also about land and the bay. It offers elements that drive us forward while also taking us back to a time we really treasure. We have the ability to create broader greenspaces, larger quads. We will be able to preserve trees, landscaping and buildings that are inherent in the culture of the school, while also adding other facilities that we need, and “With La Brisa, our physical growth is not just about buildings, it’s also about land and the bay. It offers elements that drive us forward while also taking us back to a time we really treasure.” Photographs by Suzanne Kores.