Campaign for cover

Ladue Education Foundation agrees on providing new amenities for West Campus

by Allen You

editor in chief

This past summer, the Ladue Education Foundation board met to decide what project they wanted to pursue for the school year. By unanimous vote, they cast their top priority as solving the lack of amenities and restrooms at the Fifth Grade Center, or the West Campus, athletic fields and courts.

“At LEF, our new motto is to go ‘Above and beyond for all students,’” LEF board secretary Jodi Minkler said. “For sports… all of those groups use that area and there’s no permanent rest area with bathrooms [and] no drinking fountain with a covered area. So we started thinking that that’s a huge need. And the district has a plan to build something like that, but not for [at least] five years.”

So came the West Campus Plaza Capital Campaign, a crowdfunding effort amounting to $550,000 to expedite the construction process of a new facility that would include bathrooms, a rest area and vending machines. $200,000 would be supplied by the school district’s facil- ities budget, leaving $350,000 to be desired from community fundraising.

“We’re hoping that there’s going to be a grassroots effort of families that really want this to happen to get together and talk to their friends,” Minkler said. “Once we get the advertising [permission], we’re hoping that maybe some families who have businesses in Ladue will purchase the advertising.”

Businesses will be allowed to advertise on the fields for the first time, but a large portion will still come from individual donations. There are two main incentives for donating coming from the LEF. One is a donor plaque, where certain dollar amounts will be recognized for their contributions. wther is the Coach’s Corner plaque, where $5,000 can be raised for a Ladue coach to get recognized by name on the plaque. Still, the overall incentive is to alleviate the current pains of spectators and athletes that comes with attending sporting events at the West Campus.

“The back portion the fields of the Fifth Grade Center is our secondary athletic facility,” athletic director Nick Gianino said. “We have two full-sized turf fields. There is our baseball field, our softball field and tennis courts. But we do not have permanent outdoor restrooms on the West Campus or the Fifth Grade Center. And that’s been something we’ve been discussing for a long time, because it’s a beautiful facility. But it’s a beautiful facility that uses porta-potties as a means of restrooms, so it impacts what we do on a daily basis from an athletic standpoint.”

If $550,000 can be raised by the end of the 2022-2023 school year, then according to Minkler, what would’ve taken years can now be done in just a few months.

“They told us that if we can raise the money by the end of the school year, they could break ground this summer,” Minkler said. “And, assuming there weren’t any major surprises, it would be done in October.”