St. John’s Episcopal Day School is undertaking a major redevelopment of its Hyde Park campus, building a new three-story school for Grades 1 through 8 on property that currently serves its middle school.
The roughly 93,000-square-foot building at 240 S. Plant Ave. will include classrooms, science and STEAM facilities and arts space, along with a commercial kitchen, performance and meeting space, and a student wellness center.
“We are not merely replacing an old building with a new one,” Head of School Hugh Jebson told TBBW. “The new campus also allows us to enhance the children’s experience by adding new programs not possible because of current physical limitations.”
That space also allows St. John’s to consolidate a school now spread across three campuses. Plant Avenue currently serves grades 5 through 8; after the redevelopment, most students will attend there, with a separate campus retained for 4- and 5-year-olds.
The consolidation changes where students attend school within the property St. John’s already owns. The school enrolls about 600 students from pre-K through eighth grade.
“We’re not getting bigger,” Jebson said. “We’re not expanding physically. We’re utilizing the existing footprint of our largest campus, which is the existing middle school campus.”
That footprint had also become a constraint. Aging facilities and limited land restricted what St. John’s could accommodate, leading the board to begin a master-planning process. Detailed planning for the redevelopment started about four or five years ago.
St. John’s has raised $14 million so far through a capital campaign. Jebson said donor names will be released with permission, while some gifts will remain anonymous.
The plan extends beyond the academic building itself. St. John’s plans to grow its arts program and add student wellness, performance and athletic facilities. A large turf field will provide room for recreation and team practices, something Jebson called “a real differentiator” for an urban school. The project also includes an outdoor pavilion and underground stormwater infrastructure.
Fitting those additions onto the same footprint requires St. John’s to rethink land now devoted to surface parking. The work will proceed in phases, starting with the academic building, followed by the parking garage and then the turf field.
St. John’s Parish Inc. is the project owner, with Barr & Barr Inc. serving as general contractor and Cooper Johnson Smith Peterson Architects as architect. Walter P. Moore is the structural engineer.