The seven members of the Moorestown Friends School Development Office will be moving into new offices in Van Meter Hall, causing student programs housed in the building to relocate midyear.
Van Meter Hall’s purpose has been in flux since it was purchased by the school in 2008, but the movement of the development office into the building sets its purpose for the foreseeable future, said Director of Finance and Operation Lisa Carbone Warren.
Van Meter Hall’s ground floor has been previously renovated during the summer of 2017 to create a meeting space for students and teachers or to host special school events. After Julia de la Torre’s convocation in September, the development office hosted a reception in the Van Meter Hall space.
The current renovations of Van Meter Hall were not originally intended for the development office. Moving the development office into the building ended up being the most cost effective option. Many of the architect’s proposals to renovate the building to fit the school’s original needs would have cost upwards of $2 million dollars, or $3 million if inflation is taken into account, something which Carbone Warren said the school can not presently afford.
“We need office space,” said Carbone Warren, “we thought we could do it without spending a lot of money.”
After discussion by the school committee and reviewal of architecture proposals, the decision was made to renovate the future development offices with new carpets and a fresh coat of paint. Development is taking their current furniture from their present offices in the basement of the main building.
The building, which was originally apartments, has bathrooms in nearly every room. Carbone Warren said the school will not be going to the expense of demolishing and rebuilding the rooms, so every office will have a bathroom: “It’s weird, but convenient.”
The development office will also have additional storage space in Van Meter Hall for housing school records and other documents.
The timeline for the move is not firm. Carbone Warren said the renovations will take place from late November to late January. The development office has a small window to move: one week in February when their workload is lighter. However, if the building is not ready, development will move in the summer, said Carbone Warren.
The development office is currently housed with the Business Office in the basement. Development’s move to Van Meter Hall would make room in the basement for the Marketing Communications team and Director of Auxiliary Programs Martha Cameron. Additionally, the Business Office would gain a conference room and a workspace for confidential meetings about things like health benefits and contracts. As it stands, when the development or business office wants to have a staff meeting, they must reserve out the Moriuchi room for everyone to fit.
Development’s move has caused the student programs in Van Meter Hall to change locations in the middle of the year. Carbone Warren said that programs typically are not moved in the middle of the year, but because discussion of the Development Office’s move had only started during the summer, it was necessary for this occasion.
One student program that has been affected is the MFS newspaper, WordsWorth. In the summer of 2015, Academic Technology Coordinator and WordsWorth adviser Diana Day created WordsWorth’s “Fox Tracks Studio” in one of the rooms that will be converted for development offices.
Day said that she selected this particular room to use for the studio because of its size and exposure to light. She said Associate Head of School and Academic Dean Chris Kimberly had told her to be aware that “at some point development was going to be over there.”
Bearing this in mind, Day said she designed the studio to be portable for when the time came. That time came at the beginning of the school year, when Chris Kimberly informed the advisors of student programs housed in the mansion (sewing, journalism, and robotics) that the move was coming at some point during the 2018-2019 school year, and to be ready to move their programs by the Thanksgiving break.
“It wasn’t a surprise,” said Day, who moved the journalism studio into the space the sewing class had previously been using. She said that while she wasn’t told that she would need to move again, to make anything in the room permanent would be “foolhardy.”
Director of Development Steve Zakroff was hesitant to celebrate the development office’s move at the time of publication. He said he was “hopeful that it will work out” but didn’t want to celebrate until all the work is done.
“The one thing I’m worried about is if the electricians run into problems,” said Zakroff, noting that would be a reason for the move to be delayed. He added that when the move officially takes place he would be happy to talk more.
This originally appeared in the December 19, 2018 print edition.
