|
Volume CXXXIII, Number 14 |
 |
BOC building construction progresses
JAMES FISHER
ORIENT STAFF
Outing Club director Mike Woodruff grimaced as his office,
which he shares with other officers, piles of gear, and a library of field
guides, filled with students recapping last weekend's trips and planning
upcoming ones. One of the most anticipated benefits of the new Outdoor
Leadership Center, he said, will be plenty of office space, giving the
BOC's leaders a little more room to think.
 |
| The new BOC Outdoor Leadership Center is taking shape at the site of the former BowdInn. (Colin LeCroy, Bowdoin Orient) |
Woodruff and assistant director Stacey Kirshner's future
offices, located at the intersection of Bath Road and College Street,
will be housed in the Outing Club's Outdoor Leadership Center, along with
room for gear storage, a kitchen area to prepare food for expeditions,
and plenty of social space. "We want the building to be a gathering
place for all our leaders and members," Kisrchner said.
The building will feature a large stone fireplace, despite
the College's bricking up and disabling of the social house fireplaces.
Vice President for Planning and Development Bill Torrey said that the
fireplace would be "symbolic of Maine and the outdoors."
The project's initial grant came from Steven Schwartz '70,
a member of the Appalachian Mountain Club, and has also received funding
from Leon Gorman of the L.L. Bean family and other New England donors.
"We had huge support from Bowdoin alumni," Woodruff said.
Wright-Ryan Construction superintendent Chuck Freeman estimated
that the building is forty percent complete, and is scheduled to be finished
on June 15. "We are maybe a little ahead of that," Freeman said.
Torrey concurred, noting that "we are on budget" at $1.25 million
and that one-half of the building is already under a roof. The house could
be "done some time in March," Torrey said.
Woodruff said that the Outing Club hopes to move in by July
1, in time to organize the Pre-Orientation trips for the class of 2006
from there. BOC leader Noah Long '03 said that the Outdoor Leadership
Center "is going to be the most environmentally efficient building
on campus."
Torrey said that the project pushed Bowdoin's outdoor facilities
closer to those of Dartmouth's. The Dartmouth Outing Club, founded in
1910, is one of the largest college outing clubs in the country. It operates
ten publicly accessible cabins on New Hampshire trails and, like the BOC,
offers trips to incoming first years.
Woodruff is anxious to use the new space to run next year's
pre-Os, which is always a slightly chaotic job. About three-fourths of
incoming first years go on those trips, led by students to all parts of
Northern New England and even to Kent Island off the Canadian coast.