BGI Campus 2 - Other Sites

So besides the 22 acres of land I've assembled in Poulsbo Village that could be BGI's campus (see previous blog) there are other options surfacing.

Saint Edwards Monastery in Kenmore


Saint Edwards was a monastery at one point in its history.  It is now part of the Washington State Parks system.  The State is looking for a use for the 95,000 !! square foot building that is located on 316 acres on the north shore of Lake Washington.  Bill Koss, the property manager of the State Parks system thinks a school would be the best use. The building looks like the set for the Harry Potter movies.  Gary Warhaftig, who has formed an Advisory Council has done a lot of research about Saint Edwards.  There are all sorts of issues about it.  For starters it is not for sale.  We would have to lease it.  The state would require the place remains as a park which could be okay.  The building is five floors of 19,000 each and was built in the 1930's to building codes that are somewhat outdated to say the least.  It would cost a fortune and take a couple of years to bring it up to code.  The City of Kenmore, particularly certain City Council members will have a lot to say about what happens there.  So will the neighbors who stopped a plan to convert the monastery into a hotel. 

West Sound Academy
Another possibility is for BGI to partner with West Sound Academy which owns 20 acres and several buildings on an enormous track of forest and open land that includes Northwest Academy of Art.
This place is located just over the bridge to Poulsbo about 25 minutes from both the Bainbridge and Kingston Ferry.  I will be checking this out.

Port Gamble
Then there is interest by Pope Resources to develop its 5,000 acres in Port Gamble and include a school there.  I am setting up a meeting with John Rose as soon as possible to talk with him about it.  He pitched Gifford this idea a year or so ago.

Bainbridge Island
Plus there are other possible locations on Bainbridge to be explored.  For instance there are 20 acres of land I heard might  be for sale across the way from Islandwood. 

Islandwood
Finally we also have to keep in mind the possibility we partner with Islandwood itself and enter into a long term lease and as we grow are allowed to build a classroom building there.  

For me this whole thing started because of Becky Erickson's initative.  I didn't want to get too carried away with the idea of using my land to do this without talking to other board members and finding out exactly how the entire community would want to proceed about this.  The Board approved my doing this exploration.  So to get serious we need to figure out what is the minimum facility we would need on a BGI campus for starters and what the school might need ten or more years out.  It will be useful to know what is the maximum size of an class or cohort that functions (looks like 130 is the maximum);  how many students do we need for the school to be sustainable (the guess now is 600);  how many separate intensives do we need;  given the number of intensives what is the cost of operations;   how much money would we need to raise to do it all.

It will be awhile before we can move in any direction except to analyze all of this.  The strategic planning process would need to be done before we could start figuring out the campus strategy.