MERIDEN — Kimball Union Academy has secured a $10 million gift toward the school’s planned Athletics and Wellness Center, part of an ongoing plan to reshape the school’s campus.
The proposed 40,000-square-foot Athletics and Wellness Center, projected to cost $35 million to $40 million, would be attached to the school’s Barn Field House.
The gift, from Phillip H. Morse, who attended KUA for the 1959-60 school year, is the largest gift for a capital project in the school’s history. Morse, a native of Danvers, Mass., who now lives in Florida, has served as vice chairman of the Boston Red Sox since 2004. The Athletics and Wellness Center will be named for him.
The project, which could break ground as early 2027, is central to the school’s plans to re-orient its 200-acre campus around green space, including a new quad and gathering space.
“As we look out over the horizon, it’s really the cornerstone to a number of subsequent projects,” Tyler Lewis, KUA’s head of school, said in an interview.
The private school, which serves 340 high school students, 20% to 25% of whom are day students from the Upper Valley and environs, is enjoying a run of strong financial support, Lewis said. It announced its largest-ever gift, a $20 million anonymous donation for its endowment, in 2018, and is currently in the quiet phase of a capital campaign.
The school recently opened two new residence halls, with rooms for 50 students and three faculty residences, plus a fourth faculty residence. Building the Athletics and Wellness Center will clear the way to turn the building housing Alumni Gym into a STEM center. And the Coffin building, a former library that houses the current STEM center, would be removed.
“It’s the least efficient building on our campus,” Lewis said. An element of KUA’s campus plan is sustainability; the new residence halls have geothermal temperature control. Building projects involve closing roads and parking lots to make the campus more pedestrian-friendly, and KUA is developing its own food systems, with a greenhouse, gardens and farm animals.
Founded in 1813, KUA was a small school confined to a hilltop in Meriden. Its campus now reaches from the hilltop down to Route 120 and the school holds around 1,300 acres, Lewis said. KUA’s endowment has grown from seven figures not long ago to $80 million.
KUA is not the only Upper Valley private school collecting substantial donations for capital projects. Cardigan Mountain School, a private middle school for boys in Canaan, opened a new STEM center and a new experiential learning center in 2020, is steadily renovating residence halls and is planning for new housing for students and faculty, according to its website. And Crossroads Academy, a private K-8 school in Lyme, opened a new middle school science center in 2021.
“KUA is thriving right now,” Lewis said. Enrollment is beyond capacity, and around 800 students apply for 130 open spots each year. About 20% of students come to KUA from abroad.
Tuition at KUA for the current year is $80,100 for boarding students and $50,500 for day students, according to the school’s website. Around 40% of students receive financial aid, Lewis said.
“It’s globally very much in demand right now, so we’re trying to leverage the momentum that we’re experiencing right now,” Lewis said.
The Athletic and Wellness Center is a kind of capstone on the current expansion. It will feature a gym with multiple courts, an indoor track, locker rooms and better training facilities. Combined with the Barn Fieldhouse, it will be part of an 80,000-square-foot athletics complex. (Dartmouth College’s Leverone Field House is 91,000 square feet, by comparison.)
The structure will enable KUA to catch up to some of its peer institutions, Athletic Director Becca Main said in an interview. Every athlete and coach will now be able to have a locker, for example.
“It’s just going to change everything,” Main said.
The center’s cardio and strength facility will serve athletes and the general student population alike. The wellness aspect of the center will aid the school’s dance and theater programs.
“During my time at Kimball Union, athletics was at the heart of my experience,” Morse said in a news release about his donation. He also has made sizable donations to athletics facilities at the University of Maine, where he played baseball as a student.