Winter can be an extremely tough time in Oregon, especially if your building is over 100 years old. In the midst of a cold winter Albany Christian School (ACS), has just purchased and is installing a brand new heating system in their gymnasium.
Opened in 1964, ACS started as a church that was looking to open a christian school in Albany that would be an alternative education. The school's focus was on academic excellence, while also teaching students about the Bible. The church had been looking for a new facility to house their growing congregation and stumbled upon the old Albany High School building.
After putting in a bid the church moved into the school and had their pastor as the principal, two teachers and just 57 students. In 1985 the school opened up a preschool and now their preschool, elementary and middle school teaches about 300 students in total. The school is now in its fifth decade and of course a 100 year old building is bound to need some upgrading here and there.
The heating system took about a week to install, according to members of the school congregation. The heater follows a few other upgrades just made to the gym mainly the handmade replacement bleachers that went up over the summer time.
The building itself has also gone through major upgrades. In the summer of 2013 the building fell victim to a significant fire which led to many improvements including energy efficient upgrades, and various remodeling projects including the men's bathroom.
Mike Mellison, associate pastor at Willamette Community Church, was also the "point person" in helping get the heater installed. ACS shares the building with Willamette Community Church, in downtown Albany.
"It's nice knowing that the school is continuing to make upgrades where it feels it can better the environment for the kids," said Roger Williams, a parent who has multiple kids going to Albany Christian.
On top of using the gymnasium for school purposes the gym is also used on Thursday nights where the Willamette Community Church hosts an open gym basketball night.
"The old heater really wasn't able to heat up the entire gym quickly at all," said Jamison Dufour, a participant at open gym. "This new heater is much quicker and a lot less noisy."
Having your headquarters located in a 100-year-old building will pose some problems, but ACS and Willamette Community Church continue to show that they will take the endeavors on one at a time.
At a Glance:
Albany Christian School and Willamette Community church share a building in downtown Albany and have been around since 1964. The school was founded by members of the church who purchased the building that wanted to offer children an alternate education in the city of Albany. The church recently had a brand new heating system installed in the gymnasium of the building.
1. I really enjoyed reading Nick’s article Albany Christian School Gets New Heater in Gymnasium. What really stood out to me was his lead, because it was intriguing and very clever! Instead of being generic with the fact that Albany Christian is getting a new heater, he gave more insight to how old the building was.
ReplyDelete2. I thought Nick did a great job getting quotes from people who were directly effected by the new heater. His quotes were very fluid with his information. He also used great AP Style format for the numerals in the article when it refers to the amount of people.
3. If I was the editor I would suggest separating his paragraphs more and implementing more quotes to transition between topics about the heater. I would’ve also asked him to go back possibly and get some photos of the new heater!
4. For a follow-up story, I would suggest writing an article about an event held in the new gymnasium with the new heater going. That way, there is more comments towards peoples reactions about the new heater and a news piece of an event.