North Adams Transcript

WILLIAMSTOWN -- The arts are growing at Buxton School in the form of a new complex school officials hope to break ground on in the spring of 2010.

Pete Smith, co-director of the private boarding school off South Street, said last week the school has raised enough money from its capital campaign to move forward with the first phase of a project to build a new arts complex.

"I'm very satisfied with the funding for the project. There have been a lot of false starts, but I'm pleased we're moving forward," he said.

The first phase of the project involves constructing a fine arts building and a music building.

The fine arts building will include space for studio arts, photography, video production, graphics and a small gallery, while the music building will contain a classroom space and some practices rooms.

In addition, an attempt will be made to outfit the buildings for a photovoltaic system that may be installed some time down the road, Smith said.

"We looked into solar as an alternative energy source, but with the expense and the pay back not being as quick as we would like, it wasn't feasible," he said.

The estimated cost for the first phase of the project is $1.2 million, he said.

"The plan right now is to have the music building open in time for the start of the school year next September, and the fine arts building we hope to have open by January 2011" he said.

The

second phase of the project, which will move forward at a later date, will be the construction of a ceramics building.

The new one-story music, fine arts and ceramics buildings will be located on the edge of a meadow to the south of the main building on the school's 117-acre campus.

This year the school's enrollment totals 85 students in grades nine through 12, with about a dozen being non-residential students.

Smith said the new arts complex will be good for Buxton School which is dedicated to offering quality arts programs.

"The arts programs at Buxton are currently in a state of expansion," he said.

The enrollment in painting and drawing classes has expanded over the past couple years, and new teachers have been hired in those areas to address the increasing numbers, he said.

While the music studies take place in a building known as the "Tool Shed," studio arts are located in one upstairs room of the library, while ceramics, a dark room, and video production are in the basement of the library.

"We're in a situation where we have been dealing with a setup for many years, but it's getting to the point where it's no longer good," Smith said.

He said the school's capital campaign, which began about five years ago, will cover the cost of the project.

The campaign has already raised about $4.2 million.

Some of those funds were used toward the renovation of the main classroom building and the addition of a science laboratory in 2005, which was the first need identified in the school's master plan.

The second need was the arts complex.

"We hit a couple snags along the way. The original cost estimated for the building was higher than we thought. We had to re-think and re-design the project. Then the economy tumbled, and people were a little hesitant to pull the trigger [to get the construction started]," he said.

While a new building won't change the high quality of work students produce, it will allow the school's arts programs to grow, he said.

"It will expand the programs and enable more people to participate in them at different levels," he said.

To reach Meghan Foley, e-mail mfoley@thetranscript.com.