Harbor Country Day School completes $8.5M renovation that includes new auditorium, library, STEAM room

After 10 years of fundraising and planning and two years of construction, an $8.5 million upgrade of a St. James private K through 8 school is complete.

"Harbor’s moment has officially arrived," Andy Sterling, Harbor Country Day School's head of school, said at a Friday ceremony to celebrate completion of the academic wing.

"For more than 10 years, it’s been a dream in progress. For the last  \ two years, we’ve been designing, planning, meeting, fundraising and constructing," Sterling said. He credited the school’s students, faculty and staff for working and studying through the construction that went on during school hours. "Your patience has finally paid off."

The school had struggled for years with limited classroom space due to desks being too small and the building’s small size, school officials previously stated. The two-year construction project involved replacing an extension of the school's main building with a larger structure — its new academic wing.

The wing — funded by private contributions, donations and a capital campaign — is a three-story, 11,841-square-foot academic wing that adds 11 learning spaces for all grades, as well as new classrooms for grades 5 through 8. Shared spaces include a new library, music learning center, STEAM center, art studio, convocation hall and performance space.

Friday's ribbon-cutting ceremony was held in the new auditorium and was attended by local, Suffolk County and New York State elected officials, as well as about 150 adults and children from the school.

The private school serves about 160 students from preschool through 8th grade, and the upgraded facilities will give it the ability to increase its enrollment to 200, according to school officials.

Garrett Bergen, vice chair of the school’s board of trustees and co-chair of the buildings and grounds department, said at the ceremony the project’s completion made it easier for the independent school’s curriculum to "develop leaders and a program that gives students the opportunity to participate in all activities, whether they be for academics, athletics or the arts."

During Friday's ceremony, school officials received several commendations from the Town of Smithtown, Suffolk County and New York State.

State Assemb. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-St. James) told students the new upgrades were "all done for you so you can get ready for the world."

After the ceremony, Cynthia Wong Lippe, chair of the school’s board of trustees, stood in the renovated library on the second floor of the school, which opened in 1958 on the grounds of the former Tulip Knoll estate. The property is the former home of William A. Minott, heir to the Goodyear Rubber Co.

Noting that the school was built by people who wanted an alternative to public education, Lippe said the upgrades would allow the school to expand its programs, and to keep up with the intention of its founders while incorporating state-of-the-art technology to teach a new generation of students.

A highlight of the renovations is the STEAM room (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math), which allows students to build, design, brainstorm and collaborate with other students in several related fields. For example, fourth grade students have researched rare birds using the room and then built prototype birdhouses for them, according to Lippe.

"It really lends itself to interdisciplinary learning. This was the motivation to build the new facilities," Lippe said. "It’s empathy-based. They first identify a problem in the world they want to address, depending on their grade level ... and now they have more sophisticated tools at their fingertips, like 3D printers, coding, learning modeling, and every year, they learn a little bit more, so when they go into those STEAM labs in high school, they have a lot of tools and resources under their belt."