We can’t wait.
Grand Designs
As well as our regular readers, CBD is often fascinated by the ambitious, extravagant building projects undertaken at Sydney’s wealthiest private schools. Which takes us to Ravenswood, the $42,000-a-year girls’ school in Gordon, one of many such institutions that are clustered around the leafiest suburbs of the upper north shore.
The school recently announced grand plans for a state-of-the-art wellbeing and sports centre, including a gym, basketball courts, rooftop tennis facilities and a new strength and conditioning centre.
The development has led to the typical parental grumbles reaching our ears. Some fear the project would involve paving the school’s last remaining oval to build the indoor wellness centre. Those fears are apparently unfounded: a school insider told CBD the oval would still be in operation.
Then again, if anyone can stop the multimillion-dollar facilities arms race that has stricken Sydney’s private schools, it’s the parents who are coughing up eye-watering (and steadily increasing) annual fees to support the whole thing.
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The wellbeing centre comes five years after the school opened a $20 million student centre. And the new project is set to be constructed by Taylors, the firm that gave the world, and this column, Scots College’s $60 million Scottish baronial castle-themed student centre, far and away this column’s favourite monument to private school excess.
Ravenswood’s new development is the latest step in a wellbeing push which is the baby of outgoing principal Anne Johnstone, who was poached last year to lead scandal-plagued Cranbrook after the Bellevue Hill school’s headmaster Nick Sampson departed.
If anywhere could do with a dose of wellness, built or otherwise, it’s Cranbrook. Indeed, rumours are hot around the eastern suburbs that the school is planning another splashy new upgrade. Watch this space.
On the Lax
Spotted: Labor members are currently enjoying a glorious interregnum between its landslide election victory and when the messy work of parliament returns next month.
CBD’s spies saw Labor member for Bennelong Jerome Laxale living his best life at Sydney’s ICC on Saturday night, catching Emmy Award-winning actor couple Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman’s stage conversation with radio presenter Zan Rowe to mark the last night of Vivid (finally, we sigh).
Laxale was carrying four beers back to his seat, and frankly, he’s worked up a hard-earned thirst. The former mayor of Ryde won John Howard’s old seat by a hair’s breadth in 2022, but he increased his margin to a handsome 9.3 per cent in last month’s poll. We’d drink to that.
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