By Maxine Smith
A major change is on the horizon for the Lovett School! The building of the new Community Center is in the works and is on track to be finished by 2028…hopefully.
The new Community Center is part of Lovett’s centennial plan, which has been in development for 3 years. This plan started with the loop road and the new parking deck. “The new parking deck and loop road had to happen before we could work on the Community Center because we need the traffic to go around the CC,” Mr. Boswell told me.
The Community Center will have a prime spot facing the river and will be constructed to be the connecting point of the campus. “You’ll be able to see from the upper school to the lower school playground, you’ll see the middle schoolers walking to lunch because the dining hall will be in the new building as well, on the first couple of floors. And so my hope is that it will create a connected K-12 campus,” said Mr. Boswell, adding that, “it’ll be very different than now where you really don’t feel like you have any contact with lower schoolers.”
Another hope and dream for Mr. Boswell with this project is to make the Lovett School more welcoming. “We will move our [front] office over there so that there’s a welcoming face to our campus, so that when you walk into our school, you’d actually see our office and see Ms. Gilmore or somebody else right there to greet you when you come in,” said Mr. Boswell.
Right now, administrative offices are in the Upper School, which is a little misleading because the administration leads the whole school and not just the Upper School, which is why it is a better fit in the Community Center.
Additionally, Mr. Boswell hopes that in place of the current Upper School office there will be an additional classroom. “I would love it if we had sort of a flexible space here that could be used as a makers space in the upper school.” While there will be a new makers space in the new building, Mr. Boswell would love to “have interdisciplinary projects” right here in the Upper School. “Students could just come down to this space and all the materials are already there, so that they didn’t have to be transported to somebody’s classroom or they didn’t have to go all the way over to the new makers space where there are already classes scheduled,” said Mr. Boswell.
As for the Upper School, many changes are coming this summer. Next year, many of our popular spots on campus will be moved to different locations.
“The cafe, bookstore, and counseling suite, as they are currently set up, will be transformed into art classrooms,” said Mr. Boswell. The Foundations of Art room in the community center will be where the cafe is next year. The ceramic studio will be where the counseling suite is now. “The third classroom will be about where the bookstore is, and that’s going to have the printmaking classes and some of our new architecture class, and other new things,” Mr. Boswell said.
As for Upper School common spaces, the counseling suite is moving up to the student lounge. The counseling suite will include the counselors’ offices and will be “a space for students to hang out, decompress, but also a conference space,” said Mr. Boswell.
All the alcoves are also being redone this summer. “We’re not buying new furniture for the alcoves,” said Mr. Boswell. The alcoves will use the furniture from the Community center spaces that are being vacated. Mr. Boswell plans to have the alcoves on the first and second floors be spaces for eating and socializing, while the third-floor alcoves will be quiet study spaces.
The alcove closest to the US 200 room on the 2nd floor will serve as a long-term space for learning specialists and the ARC. “It will be a space for our learning specialists to work with students one-on-one. Also some isolated testing areas for them, said Mr. Boswell. This would make it easier for students as they wouldn’t have to go across to the CC for tutoring.
But the biggest project is clearly the new community center, which is anticipated to be a 20-month build, though Lovett is unsure of the exact timeline.
“If we knock it down in May of 2026, then it’ll be open for the fall of 2028,” said Mr. Boswell.
They are still working on permitting, which could delay the date that we start to break ground. Mr. Boswell anticipates having an exact timeline of the build by June 1st.
