Sayre School broke ground this week on the construction of a new $9.9 million building to house its Lower School for pre-kindergarten through fourth grade students on its downtown campus, between Limestone Avenue and Martin Luther King Boulevard.
The new 37,000-square-foot facility will extend along Pleasant Stone Street over the current locations of Sayre’s Lower School and extended day facilities. The road that currently cuts across Sayre’s campus behind Old Sayre will also be removed and replaced with pedestrian-friendly walkways and green space.
“This facility will have a transformative impact on our community,” said Stephen Manella, head of school for Sayre. “It will have state-of-the-art features and enhanced programming for our students in the sciences, a performance space, and a library to facilitate research for our students.”
The new building will feature a science classroom complete with its own laboratory, designed and outfitted with support from Alltech, that will open onto a rooftop patio and garden, enabling students to incorporate natural environments into their studies. The design also incorporates additional outdoor spaces and play areas in close connection with classrooms, to provide more opportunities for open play and experiential learning.
“We put as much thought into the exterior space as the interior space of this building,” Manella said. “It will have playgrounds right off of the classrooms. We know that play at the earliest levels is so important to child development, and a tremendous amount of thought has been put into how we are going to use that exterior space as well.”
Manella said that the building’s design was tailored to complement both the modern and traditional aspects of the 160-year-old school’s campus and its vibrant downtown Lexington environment.
“We are so proud to be part of the downtown community,” he said. “We wanted to build a structure that fit with some of our more contemporary buildings, and still allowed Old Sayre as a beautiful historic building to shine as the centerpiece of our campus.”
The new facility, which will also house Sayre’s extended day program, will both expand and enhance the educational opportunities at the school, Manella said, and provide the school’s staff with a learning environment tailored to fit Sayre’s educational mission.
“We feel, with this building, we will finally have a Lower School facility that reflects the caliber of our outstanding faculty who are already here," Manella said. "“One of the hallmarks of our mission is to have an inclusive and innovative educational program, and we are proud of our success on those fronts. This facility will enable us to enhance further those mission points, grow enrollment and therefore make our education program even more accessible to members of the Lexington community.”