HYDE PARK — De La Salle Institute is planning a major expansion of its Douglas campus as the school prepares to go co-ed for the first time in its 126-year history.
De La Salle president Father Paul Novak released a video statement on Aug. 21 showing a new four-story building adjacent to the 3434 S. Michigan Ave. campus in Douglas for the combined boys and girls schools.
“We will begin a capital campaign in 2016 to provide us with better facilities that will better meet the needs of our co-educational community,” Novak said. “There’s a program to build new classrooms, there’s a program to build a theater space, which we currently don’t have, to renovate our locker rooms and our athletic building.”
He said the fundraising effort would also pay for the renewal of athletic fields for the Meteors and continued renovation of the existing Institute for Young Men campus.
Novak was unavailable to comment Friday, so it’s unclear still whether fundraising goals have been set yet and how much the campus expansion would cost.
The renderings show a four-story building with as many as five retail spaces at 3459 S. Michigan Ave.
The lot where the campus plans to expand has been vacant since late summer 2011, when the Pickford Theater was torn down. The building from 1912 was the last of the theaters from Bronzeville’s heyday for jazz and was also home to the South Side Center for the Performing Arts in the late 1960s.
Novak said when the new building is completed the campus is expected to expand to 1,200 students.
Girl students currently attend school at the Lourdes Hall Campus for Young Women at 1040 E. 32nd Place in Bridgeport.
It remains unclear what will happen to the buildings used for the girls’ school once the expansion of the Douglas campus is complete.
A major fund raising initiative will start next year to pay for the campus expansion.
The campus will expand to a vacant lot that was once the Pickford Theater.
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