The GA community has rung in the 2023-2024 school year with the completion of the Jordan Health and Wellness Center. The new building is located between the Lower School and Cafeteria in Connor Quad and will be used by all three school divisions for years to come.
The Jordan Center is embellished with new workout facilities, an athletic hall of fame, a trainer’s room, dance and meditation areas, and a bigger nurses’ office. These spaces are open to the GA community before, after, and during the school day, making the center a welcoming environment for everyone.
Head of Upper School Dr. Molly MacKean has worked incredibly hard to make this dream building a reality for our campus. Ever since the Jordan Health and Wellness Center project was announced in June 2022, MacKean and many other faculty members have helped to design, plan, and create this addition that will bring the GA community together.
“I love that it’s a community space. It’s a space for us to gather, and I think something we learned from Covid is that the strength of the community we belong to is a big part of how we feel stable and alright in this world,” Dr. MacKean said.
In addition to the community-building aspect of the Jordan Center, it will also offer some great changes to our curriculum. MacKean shared some specific impacts the new building will have on GA students.
“One of the ways I’m excited that we’re going to use it is to start some dance classes for our students as an opt-in opportunity when they’re enrolled in P.E. classes.” Dr MacKean said. “We’ve been working with our P.E. and health and wellness teachers about how they want to use that space and so, within the Upper School curriculum, we’re trying to build opportunities to get kids over there, including the creation of new programming.”
Director of Facilities Mr. Dan Houston, is another member of the GA community that strongly contributed specifically to the designing and building process of the Jordan Health and Wellness Center. He has been a part of this project for the past couple of years, and sat-in on meetings with the GA administration as well as architects to blueprint the new building. Mr. Houston described the process of creating a new building from start to finish.
“The first piece of the puzzle is understanding what types of programs you want inside the building, and then you begin to flesh out how much space you need for those programs and how much space you need for individual people,” said Mr. Houston. “We had several discussions about how we wanted to connect the athletics buildings together, and then we began to design rooms inside of the space to accommodate for the programming we wanted, so in this case we knew we wanted the nurse’s office in the building, we wanted Mr. Ginter and his team to have a space, we obviously knew we wanted to expand the weight room; so, it was like a puzzle, trying to design those spaces within the outlines of the whole building.”
Mr. Houston continued, “Throughout the design process, we collaborated with the Campus Planning Committee and of course school administration (with Mr. Ginter and Mr. Schellhas), then we turned the design over to contractors and they began construction. So, if you think about the timeline for this project, we were in planning and design for about three years before we put a shovel in the ground to start the demolition of the breezeway, and then into construction for about fourteen months.”
Another faculty member who has made the Jordan Center possible is Athletic Director Mr. Tim Ginter. Ginter has worked closely with MacKean, Houston, trainers, coaches, and other teachers to guarantee that the new facilities can be utilized by all members of the community.
“One of my dreams is that it becomes the thing that we talked about all the time, like Middle School kids coming through, Lower School kids coming through—that the place is kind of alive. You never start with a goal of building a new facility and then wonder if it’s going to get used. The hope is that everyone kind of sees themselves in that place and what they could possibly use it for,” Mr. Ginter said.
The Jordan Center provides students, faculty and staff a place to workout at any point in the day.
The efforts of all GA community members who contributed to the creation of the Jordan Health and Wellness Center are admired by all students and faculty. The new building will have an everlasting impact on our campus through its facilities and community spaces.