From the Post-Dispatch on July 24: "The word "big" only begins to describe the new Westminster Christian Academy.
A 2,000-seat arena, two smaller gyms and an eight-lane swimming pool. Two theaters, a 400-seat cafe and a hundred classrooms. And the list goes on.
The 320,000-square-foot school is among the St. Louis area's largest recent construction projects. Initial enrollment will exceed 900 - up from 872 last year - but the school can accommodate 1,200 students in grades seven through 12.
The $70 million school, scheduled to open for classes Aug. 22, has been a boost to the area's struggling construction industry. The privately financed development has provided 14 months of much-needed work for more than 150 people employed by project manager Brinkmann Constructors and its subcontractors.
The Westminster project is among the area's 10 largest recent construction jobs, said Len Toenjes, president of Associated General Contractors in St. Louis.
"A $70 million project is significant in today's market," Toenjes said. "The number of companies competing is at an all-time high. The bids are more competitive than they've ever been."
Westminster's new school, double the size of the current facility in Creve Coeur, is on a 70-acre site on Maryville Centre Drive, just south of Highway 40 (Interstate 64) in Town and Country. The school has come a long way since classes for 72 students began in 1976 in rented space at Missouri Baptist College.
Outside the new building is Westminster's vast athletic complex of a dozen tennis courts, fields for baseball, lacrosse, soccer, field hockey, softball, a track and field facility and a football stadium with a synthetic turf field and bleachers for 2,000 spectators. Overlooking the stadium is a plaza that will provide picnic-style seating and a concession stand.
Westminster's new softball field has transplanted outfield turf from Busch Stadium - grass removed to accommodate the U2 concert.
Pulling off the $70 million project took a vigorous fundraising effort, a key donation and sale of Westminster's current school to the Ladue School District, which bought the property for an early childhood development center. Last year, Ladue district voters approved a bond issue for the center.
Planning for Westminster's Town and Country campus began in 2003, when the school bought the 40-acre site of the former West County Tech for $14.25 million. A $5 million pledge in 2007 propelled the project, helped by an anonymous gift of $7.1 million to add 30 acres to the West County Tech site. But when the economy slumped in 2008, fundraising lagged and Westminster put the project on hold.
"The economy was failing," said Charles Waldron, a former Westminster board president and the school's liaison to Brinkmann. "We rolled the plan up and said the plan can't go forward now."
But the deal with the Ladue School District produced $18 million and prompted Westminster to revive the project.
"Frankly, we look at it as a gift from God," Waldron said.
The Ladue district owns the property for the second time. Ladue West Junior High was on the site in 1980 when the district sold the tract to Westminster.
With fundraising back in full swing, Westminster has so far raised $45 million, including $13 million in pledges last year. No student tuition, currently $12,800 annually, goes toward construction, school officials said.
By "cramming" what had been an 18-month construction schedule into 14 months, Westminster saved $1.3 million, Waldron said.
Another cost-saving measure was to remodel and reuse much of the 80,000-square-foot West County Tech building. Its spacious kitchen, built for West Tech's culinary program, will serve as Westminster's cafeteria, which school officials refer to as a "cafe."
Contractors eager for work in a slow economy offered Westminster their best craftsmen and other workers, officials said.
"They manned up for the job," Waldron said. "It's kept some of the subcontractors afloat."
To gain an edge in winning the business, many contractors' project managers "got their tool boxes back out and went back out in the field," Toenjes said. "You have some folks with tremendous experience back on the job."
The facility also will give administrators the power through their smartphones to control lighting and other building systems.
Keith Shahan, a retired head of John Burroughs School and current president of Chicago-based Independent Schools Association of the Central States, said the new Westminster is by far the largest recent construction project among the group's 230 member schools.
"What Westminster Christian has done is extraordinary in these times," he said."
