Shut the fff…ront door! Of the new gym!

In the upcoming school year, Grace Church School is debuting a brand new gym on the fourth floor of the 46 Cooper Square campus. In addition to the gym at the grade school campus at 86 Fourth Avenue, Grace will have some of the most square footage of gym space of any independent school in New York City. The 14,000 square foot space begun construction on June 19, with a 14-month construction plan to completely recreate the fourth floor of the Cooper Square campus.

The school’s website provides a simulated walking tour, floor plans, and construction updates of the project. The new gym will include regulation size volleyball and basketball courts, allowing Grace to qualify to host A.C.I.S and NYSAISAA playoffs. The gym will also be home to a golf simulator, batting cage, and a new fitness center. The introduction of these new facilities will improve the sport training and P.E. time utilized by both students and coaches and will extend the training space used by the majority of, if not all, the sports teams that are offered at the High School. The plethora of new amenities that the gym will provide opens up the Grace sports program to new and exciting opportunities.

The conception of the idea of constructing this new gym stemmed from the need for the high school to have their own gym space, making P.E. and athletics training more easily accessible to high school students who, for indoor sports and PE classes, normally travel to the grade school or take classes at the Health and Racquet club next door for lack of space. Opening up a new high school that was not directly connected to the grade school campus meant that that gym had to be utilised by hundreds of more students. “When finding a space for a new high school, we knew we needed to have a gym,” Illi Armijos, Director of Athletics and high school Physical Education says. With this new gym, commute to the P.E. classes and practices will be eliminated, and the High School students will now have gym to call their own.

We had the opportunity to tour the construction site on the 4th floor, guided by Mr. Davison. While on the tour, we discovered several new features that would accompany the new gym. The fourth floor will also include three new classrooms, a gender neutral locker room, and a new woodworking shop that will replace the small woodworking operation in the downstairs art room. There will be several new office spaces for the athletic directors and admissions directors. The completion of the 4th floor and the gym will allow for efficient reconfiguration of the lower floors, allowing for classrooms and other spaces to be expanded. It will also allow for a new construction project; the multi-purpose room on the third floor will be converted into a black-box theatre in 2023. Seeing the construction first hand really exhibited the immense amount of work that this project has entailed. The ceiling of the gym will be a whopping 36 feet, with steel beams as the support and glass accents. The modernity and complexity of the new gym is reflected in the construction. Working around the in-school schedule has postponed the opening date of the gym, however, it is expected to open in the fall of 2018, just in time for the basketball season. So far, to myself and the majority of the other students here at the high school, the Gym seemed like a symphony of loud bangs and screeches above our heads. Having the opportunity to see the gym while under construction allowed me to really see the project coming to fruition. With only the renderings of the new gym on the website to see what it would look like, I didn’t really know what to expect when going up to the site. When getting to experience it first hand, it really hit me what a wonderful and impactful addition the gym is going to be to both the upper and lower schools. There are vast amounts of new space, and with such a sleek and modern design, our school will be looking tip top. I was so excited to see the progress the workers have been making. Mr. Davison explained how difficult it has been to plan construction around school time, as there is only so much that can be done while school is in session. Walking along massive steel beams that are soon to become the new ceiling of the gym showed the immense space that all students and faculty will soon be able to enjoy. Furthermore, seeing all of the components of construction that go into building something like this really put into perspective how hard the faculty and construction workers have been working on this project, and you could see this within the work. There was emphasis on safety and perfection in all aspects of the new gym, showing it to be a careful, and wonderful project that I couldn’t help but be excited about! It was still in its somewhat early stages of construction, with the third floor not yet knocked out, but there are locker rooms, new classrooms, the golf simulator, and new offices that have all been laid out and built.

Students at the High School are very excited about the construction of the new gym. The accessibility and prestige of the gym is quite appealing to the student body and they are looking forward to putting it to use. Freshman and former attendee of the Middle School, Theo Attanasio, described his excitement for the gym, “I’m really looking forward to it. As a basketball player I am looking forward to the hype that it will bring to the team. The buzz around the school on game days will bring lots of support to the games and the Grace spirit will be on display. It is nice to have a homecourt that is so close to the students.” Freshman Sebastian Morris also gave his input on the topic, “The games are going to be crazy here. If we go far in volleyball or basketball, those important games are going to have a lot of fans and a lot of grace spirit.”

Tags: 46 Campus, Gym, Up and Coming