Iona Preparatory School in New Rochelle held a groundbreaking ceremony for an expanded Paul Verni Fine Arts Center to be constructed on its 26-acre Upper School campus at 255 Wilmot Road. The 21,000-square-foot facility will include a 409-seat performing arts theater.
“The expansion of the Paul Verni Fine Arts Center is one of the largest academic building projects in our history,” said Brother Thomas R. Leto, president of Iona Prep. “We have been talking about building a theater at Iona Prep for years and this is an exciting moment, solidifying our commitment to the arts and expanding career paths for students to prepare for the future.”
The center is named in honor of Paul Verni, a former Iona Prep student. He was in his senior year at the school when he was diagnosed with leukemia and died a year after graduation. He was the class valedictorian as well as an athlete and artist.
“The young man who was the inspiration for the concept of the original building, my son Paul, absolutely loved Iona (Prep),” Vito Verni, former board member at the school, told those gathered for the Oct. 16 event. “Today, we arrive at the day, which is the start of making that extension, that dream, a reality.”
The theater will have all of the technical facilities needed for musical and dramatic productions, including a full-size shop for building scenery.
There also will be rehearsal and performance spaces for musicians and vocalists. The new building would connect with the existing 5,000-square-foot Verni Building on campus.
There would be new classrooms on both the first and second floors of the new performing arts center and the building”™s lobby would have large windows providing views of an athletic field and creating a new gathering space.
New pedestrian paths would be built that comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. A new gated entrance from Stratton Road will be created for use by emergency vehicles only.
The plans also include new foliage to enhance screening for neighbors who live on Stratton Road and Wilmot Road.
When the project was being reviewed by New Rochelle”™s Planning Board, Ronen Wilk of Peter Gisolfi Associates, the architectural firm that designed the project, explained, “Currently, the performing arts activities are taking place in the gymnasium, which is inadequate to house those activities and is also a tremendous conflict with the athletic activities that are taking place in the same space, so there is a great need for the school to have this new state-of-the-art performing arts facility.”
The expansion is a direct result of the school”™s $10 million Centennial Campaign for Excellence that started in 2014 to provide facility enhancements and instructional improvements at both the Upper and Lower School campuses.
Iona Prep was established in 1916 and marked its 105th birthday this year. It is an all-boys Catholic school that has a Lower School serving students from prekindergarten at age four up to the eighth grade and an Upper School for grades nine through 12. In addition to including the arts in its curriculum, Iona Prep features the Prep Players and stage crew, which state, “Our goal is to entertain our audiences and to develop acting and technical skills in our actors and crew members.”
