St. Bede’s $14 million upgrades almost finished

Graduation day was a long time ago, but Dr. Michael Stuart gets nostalgic thinking about St. Bede Academy in Peru. So how, he wondered, would they modernize the school without losing its almost hallowed ambience?

Stuart visited St. Bede during homecoming weekend and came away impressed. The Legacy Project, to which he and classmates had contributed, somehow managed to retain St. Bede’s historic character while still bringing it into the 21st century.

“There’s so much pride in the campus,” said Stuart, an orthopedic surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. “To take that building, which was probably built in the 1890s, and to renovate it and modernize it without losing the heritage was amazing.”

And it’s almost finished. Almost 10 years after St. Bede announced a fundraising drive to bankroll the project – with a stated budget of about $14 million – the school is approaching the final stages of construction.

There is one rather dark corridor on the main floor – pretty hard to miss because everything around it shines – and St. Bede still is seeking $700,000 to complete the four-stage renovation.

Dr. Merle Piacenti, a 1968 graduate who donated to the project in memory of his late wife, Patricia, called the renovations “fantastic.”

“Up until the present time, it was just like it was in ‘68. It was gloomy and dark when you walked through,” Piacenti said. “Now it’s just the opposite. They’ve done a 180. It’s very bright and almost enlightening.”

Actually, the first construction phase was completed in 2014 even before St. Bede launched the public fundraising drive in 2017. A few years earlier, St. Bede successfully completed necessary upgrades to the fire and life-safety systems in the main school building and constructed a new arch gifted by the Class of 1964 for its 50th reunion.

That was followed by phase two, a north-side addition of the 16,000-square-foot Perino Science Center and student commons. That moved the science labs, once scattered throughout the basement and second floor of the building, into the same corner of the building, putting all the technology and equipment within reach of teachers and aspiring scientists.

The project now concludes with phase three, the renovation of corridors, classrooms, offices and other essential areas of the first and second floors of the main school building.

Colleen Cox is a math teacher who has been with St. Bede since 2011. She’s taught in the old and the new classrooms and found the difference to be striking – not least because she and her colleagues can adjust the temperatures in their classroom and make the stifling August days more tolerable.

“The technology is now seamless,” Cox said. “We can move from room to room and plug into the interactive View Sonic boards. White boards surround the classroom, which allows the students to get out of their desks and still learn. My freshmen and senior students in AP Calculus all appreciate this.”

Many rooms were individually adopted by alumni classes. Stuart and his fellow ‘75 graduates, for example, sponsored the renovation of a classroom, and he was pleased with the results. The classroom still gives “the sense of the history and tradition” of St. Bede, even though the classroom is climate-controlled with energy-efficient windows and modular desks.

“There are so many positive changes without taking away what we all remember,” Stuart said.

St. Bede recently showcased the three corridors completed in only a year and a half at homecoming, and it looks forward to doing the same at the upcoming eighth grade open house Nov. 1.

“It is impressive for our small Catholic school in the Illinois Valley to have raised over $13 million for the Legacy Project,” said Julia Yaklich, director of mission advancement and major gifts. “We are grateful to so many for their generous support and trust in this capital campaign.

“It is a true testament of their love for St. Bede. It would be amazing to announce that we have raised the $700,000 that remains and construction is on schedule to have our capital campaign completed within 10 years of when it started.

“What an incredible accomplishment for St. Bede Academy, and we are almost there.”

St. Bede’s abbot said there are many donors who share credit for getting them to the finish line.

“We are grateful for the hard work and dedication everyone has contributed to the renovations of our academy building,” Abbot Michael Calhoun said. “Our educational classrooms have been transformed into high-quality spaces where instructors and students can interact and engage one another in the learning process.”