Westminster Transition To Town And Country In Full Gear

There is an important transition impacting education taking place in Creve Coeur these days.  Westminster Christian Academy has announced it will occupy its new campus in Town and Country at Highway 40 and Maryville Centre Drive this fall. That's a year ahead of schedule. The new facility will double the academy’s educational space and will allow it to expand enrollment. At the same time, the Ladue school district is trying to determine what it will do with the Westminster property in Creve Coeur it now owns, again.

Westminster Director of Advancement, Zack Clark, said the school was unintentionally benefiting from the down economy—fewer projects competing for skilled labor meant they were able to hire a larger work force. As many as 150 construction workers are busy at what will be the new Westminster, one of the largest construction projects currently underway in St. Louis.

The private school has seen constant growth since it first started teaching students in a basement rented from Missouri Baptist College back in 1976. The following year the school purchased an elementary building in Des Peres, but outgrew it by 1982.

That led the school to its current home, a former Ladue School district building, along with a 1998 expansion. But even that was not enough to meet the needs of St. Louis families who seek the school’s Christian based education.

School officials tell Patch they knew the only way to continue growing would be to relocate once again. They had their eye on West Technical High School in Town and Country, a struggling VO-Tech run by the Special School District. When West Tech closed its doors in 2002, the academy made a leap of faith and purchased the 40 acre campus for $14.25 million dollars, even though school officials knew they couldn’t immediately move into the space. The high school, built in the 1980s, was customized for teaching construction, cooking and hotel service. At the very least, it would need to be gutted and rebuilt into standard classrooms. Officials at Westminster planned to move into the high school and keep their middle school students in Ladue. But first they needed to raise the money for the giant rehab project.

In 2007 Westminster began a fund raising campaign to turn the old votech into a 21st century high school. School officials said the academy felt blessed when an anonymous donor gave not money, but 30 acres adjacent to West Tech, valued at more than $7 million. The undeveloped land more than doubled the school's new campus, which allowed room to build a completely new school and keep all students together.

Some of the old West Tech building was torn down, but 160,000 square-feet, including a gym, were kept, saving the academy millions of dollars in construction costs. The finished building will be 320,000 square-feet.

The new building will have room for up to 1,200 students, but Westminster's Head of School Jim Marsh said the school is not expanding for the sake of growth alone. “You could say that we are simply focused on getting better, not bigger,” Marsh explained. He said the school’s main concern is to be able to serve as many Christian families as possible and to give students better opportunities.

“The campus enables us to significantly improve and expand numerous key areas like fine arts, technology and the sciences,” Clark said. “New spaces that we don’t currently have at all include a fine arts auditorium, a black box theatre, art gallery and multiple art specific classrooms.” He said the athletic department will also gain from the new campus: there will now be three gyms, instead of two, seven more tennis courts and a larger strength and conditioning facility. The Town and Country campus will also have a football stadium with seating for 2000—the current campus just has a field with bleachers.

Clark is especially proud of the building’s expanded science department and lab space, joking that some wouldn’t expect a Christian school to put so much emphasis on a strong science program.

Technology has also been high on the school’s list of improvements.

“One of the benefits of designing and building this campus nearly from the ground up has been to think creatively about technology for the future,” said Clark. He said they are using a “Smart Building” design, with a fiber-optic network built into the school’s infrastructure. “A myriad of components can be attached, much like hanging ornaments on a Christmas tree,” said Clark.

These various components, from the building’s lights and HVAC system to computers and classroom projectors, can be accessed by authorized staff from a  mobile device. For example, administrators can modify a schedule from an iPad or a facility director will be able to turn up the heat with a smart phone. The system is also designed to save energy by scheduling when the lights are used and when to turn off PCs and AV equipment.

A design improvement for the students is the inclusion of numerous “neighborhood” spaces where they can gather for presentations or team projects.

“The whole school will have a community feeling, a place to work and collaborate, rather than an institutional feeling that is often in a school," Clark said. For example, each grade will have its own section of the building, with the seventh and eighth grades having their own floors in a wing separate from the high school.

The crowning touch to the new building will come next spring when several giant stone Celtic crosses will be removed from the entrance of the old building. The cross in a circle is the school’s well recognized logo and can be seen throughout the new building. The stone crosses will take up their usual place at the school’s main entrance, which is designed to mirror the look of the current campus.

Tuesday night, the Westminster Christian Academy Association will hold a meeting in the school gym starting at 7:30 p.m. A news release says the meeting will discuss changes to the academic program and "Possible changes aimed to strengthen our Christian school culture and community, including modifications to the dress code and how we best utilize our new campus."

Meanwhile, the Ladue School District continues its analysis of what to do with the current Westminster campus once its empty. Last month, the board of education had hoped to make a decision on how the facility will be used. That decision was tabled while the district further investigates the idea of uses involving 5th and 6th grade or 7th and 8th grade students.