© 2024 University of Missouri - KBIA
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Bishop approves $6.6 million to build on to Catholic school in Columbia

After years of planning, an addition to Our Lady of Lourdes Interparish Catholic School was approved that will eliminate the need for trailers and classrooms in the basement of the rectory.

Bishop Shawn McKnight, who was ordained in February, approved the plan to build the addition for an estimated cost of $6.6 million. The addition will allow approximately 200 students who have been learning in trailers or rectory basement classrooms to move to the main school building said Chris Cordes, Our Lady of Lourdes pastor.

McKnight approved an announcement, made on Saturday, that plans for the addition were moving forward. Priests also made the announcement during weekend mass.

To raise the $6.6 million, the school started a capital campaign. Elaine Hassemer, the school’s principal, said the three pastors of each Columbia parish have been reaching out to “all the Catholics in the Columbia area” and asking them to make pledges to the campaign. She said the effort was successful and since the fall they have raised about $5.8 million.

Hassemer said McKnight approved the plan because of the money raised toward the goal. She also said the capital campaign is still going and will continue until the goal is met.

The addition will have new classrooms and other educational facilities, she said.

“It’s going to house our sixth, seventh and eighth grades,” Hassemer said. “It will have a new central main office, a new media center, a music room, an art room, a maker space and a writing lab.”

Hassemer said the school uses eight trailer classrooms and four classrooms in the basement of the rectory to educate its students.

Sister Julie Brandt, associate superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Jefferson City, said the addition will improve school safety.

“By providing more space, we’re making the whole campus more safe and secure,” Brandt said.

She added the addition will demonstrate how committed Columbia’s Catholic community is to education and would allow the school to consider how to best address the educational needs of their junior high students, which are different from those of elementary students.

The addition will be 25,500 square feet, with a two-story education wing and a 1½ story media center and office suite, according to project manager Brad Stegemann of Simon Oswald Architecture. The next step in the process will be securing the building permits from the city of Columbia, which Stegemann said they are close to doing.

He also said that because construction will begin while school is still in session, extra precautions will be taken for student safety. The school already has moved trailers from where the building addition will be constructed, Stegemann said. “That way they can have a full calendar year with students occupying those trailers.”

Cordes said the plan is to break ground and start construction this spring and move into the addition in time for the beginning of 2019-2020 school year.

Planning the addition

Planning for the addition had been in the works for about five years, Brandt said, even before the capital campaign began.

“There’s been kind of just an exploration on the part of the diocese and the Catholic community in Columbia,” she said. They were “looking at the feasibility of either building a new school or the final decision, (which) was to add on to the school site.”

She said there were two primary reasons why building an addition was selected instead of building a new school.

“There was a financial feasibility study to determine the amount that people would support a new school because our schools in our diocese are really built on the generosity of the members of the Catholic community,” Brandt said. They found that there wasn’t enough financial support for a new school, she said.

Second, she said members of the Catholic community expressed that they liked that Our Lady of Lourdes school taught students from kindergarten through eighth grade. The community did not want to separate them into two schools as the plan proposed.

Educating students together “provides for opportunities for older kids to mentor younger kids and all that, and all those positive things that can happen within that family-like environment,” Brandt said.

Stegemann said in the early schematic design phases there were five options for the addition that proposed different locations on the campus. He said the final decision was made for two reasons. First, it gives the school the flexibility to add another building at the back of their property, if necessary. But he said the primary reason was that the addition will complete the campus along Bernadette Drive.

“It ties the church finishes in with what’s going to be the new building addition,” Stegemann said. “It’ll all kind of blend seamlessly and look as one unified campus.”