NEW FACILITY TO BE THE HEART OF ROLAND PARK ATHLETICS

Roland Park Country School  will be home to an athletic facility to cost an estimated $19 million.

The Roland Park School will be home to an athletic facility worth $19 million, the 100-year-old school's board of trustees and president, Jeffrey H. Seibert informed Digital Sports through a release from its communications' director.

The project, designed by Bowie Gridley Architects with construction to be carried out by Roy Kirby & Sons, is expected to be completed in August 2008.

The new athletic complex will house three teaching gyms, a main competition court, additional classroom and meeting space, and locker rooms for players and officials, according to communications director, Nancy T. Mugele.

The facility also will be home to a suspended running track, a rowing tank for crew -- believed to be the first of its kind in a Maryland high school -- a horizontal climbing wall, a fitness center and a daycare facility for employee's children.

Roland Park School will also feature two synthetic turf fields and a newly landscaped parking lot for employees and students, according to Mugele's release.

The campaign, entitled, A Place in our Hearts, is raising $25 million toward the project, with the remainder going toward endowment for faculty compensation and student financial assistance, according to Mugele.

Early committments to the 100-year-old school total over $14 million, according to reports from Jean Waller Brune, head of Roland Park School, and campaign co-chairs Helen and E. Magruder Passano, Jr., and leadership gifts chair Fred C. C. Crozier.

--Lem Satterfield