RE Log - Spring 2020

SPRING 2020 Ransom Everglades LOG 33 Grand Entry STEM Center highlights transformed gateway to Ransom Campus The nearly finished STEM Center with its under-construction maker spaces, expansive labs, flexible classrooms, roof- top garden, convertible auditorium and outdoor performance seating is expected to be completed this spring and open for classes at the start of the new school year in August. With the rise of this extraordinary innovation center, which will expand opportunities for student research and interdisciplinary study, it’s easy to overlook the front-of-campus facelift that has occurred simultaneous to the STEM Center construction, and which is gradu- ally revealing what has long been absent from the Ransom Campus: A welcoming, green and stately entry. Visitors to the upper school no longer travel on a circuitous and less-than- attractive loop through a winding park- ing lot; they now drive into the heart of campus on a landscaped driveway with herringbone pavers that runs into what will soon be a leafy, inviting and wide- open quadrangle. This new quad, under construction as this issue went to press in early March, will offer a tree-lined footpath to the breezeway and green space, a reflecting pool and areas to sit, perform and study. There’s more: the new parking lot to the left of the entry, and at the front of the La Brisa property the school purchased in June 2016, will keep cars out of the campus center and also im- prove traffic flow on and off campus. The completion of the parking lot represents the first step in allowing daily access to the nearly eight-acre expanse that in- cludes the La Brisa home, which is being converted to administrative offices and meeting space, and should be finished by the fall. The STEM Center, of course, puts the exclamation point on the entry area transformation that marks step one of the multi-faceted REinvention under- way at the upper school, and which will continue with the demolition and construction of a new Ludington Hall, the construction of a new dining hall on the La Brisa property and eventually the renovation or redevelopment of the exist- ing dining hall. As the spring of 2020 winds down, cabinetry, digital screens and other final elements will be placed in the STEM Center’s classrooms and labs and the blue protective covering on the windows will come down. Visitors to the campus during Alumni Weekend April 17-18 will have an opportunity to see the nearly finished STEM Center and quad, and – depend- ing on the construction timeline – be among the first visitors to the building.