Saint James School Turner Athletic Center - Original Concept

As the area’s leading private high school, Saint James School has outgrown their current gymnasium. With a growing alumni presence, they lacked necessary seating for basketball games and wrestling meets. Additionally, their locker rooms needed to provide better separation between the sexes, along with general updates.

The new Turner Athletic Center provides a 1,000 seat performance gym for basketball, and a 500 seat wresting gym for meets. To accommodate event crowds, an exterior plaza was incorporated into the design. At the same time, this addresses the challenge of ADA accessibility for this sloped site.

The addition design keeps with Saint James School’s Georgian architecture on the exterior, while providing the modern necessities for today’s sports venues inside. The aesthetic challenge for this project was creating a building shape that could successfully mask their existing large gymnasium, but still focus attention on the addition. This was achieved by creating a two-story space and tower at the entrance. The locker room separation issue was solved by renovating the boys’ locker room in its existing space and moving the girls’ locker room to the addition.