After a semester of patient waiting, the Wabash and Montgomery County communities finally witnessed some progress on the Wabash Community Center this past Saturday, January 25 when the groundbreaking for the upcoming Community Center took place around midday.
The event was purely ceremonial; large containers of dirt were rolled indoors for the groundbreakers, who stabbed at the dirt with shovels in the Sparks Center’s Great Hall. Though delays with obtaining the necessary government approval have pushed back the start of the destruction of the Frank Hugh Sparks Center and, as a result, impeded the start of construction on the Community Center, Saturday’s groundbreaking represented the start of the culmination of years of time and planning that will bear the fruit of a brand new building on campus in just a few years time.
President Scott Feller began the ceremonial groundbreaking by welcoming and thanking the numerous groups and individuals who had a hand in moving the Community Center project forward. Members of the board of trustees of Wabash College, board members of the National Association of Wabash Men (NAWM), administrators of the Lilly Endowment, public sector leaders from Crawfordsville and Montgomery County, faculty and students were all represented on the day.
Feller remarked in his welcome that the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting loss of on-campus community was what prompted him to ask the board of trustees to begin substantive work planning the Center. The loss of student community highlighted the importance of an investment that would act as a hub not only for students, but for other members of the community too.
“It [the Community Center] will quite literally transform the remarkable ways our very special town does collaboration,” said Feller. “The College-community collaboration initiative will transform our campus and usher in a new era of positive cooperation for the benefit of our college and for everyone who calls Montgomery County home.”
The emphasis from the project’s leaders on boosting interaction between Wabash and the greater Montgomery County was evident in short addresses from Cory Olson ’85, chair of the board of trustees’ Building and Grounds Committee, and Kelly Taylor, chief executive officer of the Montgomery County Community Foundation. Taylor specifically mentioned the contributions of local Montgomery County residents to Wabash after the College burned down in 1838, just six years into its existence, calling it the best investment the county ever made.
The final speaker before the spades broke earth was Ike O’Neil ’27, who will be a senior when the project is expected to be completed, and spotlighted the variety of buildings and locations on campus that students congregate in on campus.
“These are the places where we talk about classes and labs, strategize about how to beat our opponents or share our aspirations,” said O’Neill. “These are the places where we forge relationships that will last a lifetime. But there’s never been a place at Wabash where everyone can gather together, where everyone belongs; until now.”
That act of congregating in a central space was a key hope of the Center’s planners. Students can sometimes feel scattered across campus, and the lack of a true student center throughout the College’s existence hindered cohesion among the student body. While Sparks was once a sturdy dining area for Wabash men, it lacked the pull to unite students from around campus.
“You think about Wabash and ‘family’ comes to mind,” said Houston Mills ’85, a member of the board of trustees. “But we all have our pockets of connection, with the football team, or the baseball team, the MXI [Malcolm X Institute of Black Studies] or whatever those pockets are. If students can bring all those points of connection to a very casual, interactive area that can expand relationships and allow for new connections to grow so when people come back in the future they’ll feel even more connected to campus.”
Alumni leaders also hope that the Community Center will help return campus to a status that drew students in on weekends. A focus of student leadership efforts in the past year, revitalizing the expectation of campus-wide events on weekends was another goal of the project’s supporters.
“The Community Center is going to provide a place for the students to be in on the weekends and not leave,” said Tony Unfried ’03, vice-president of the board of directors for the NAWM. “I heard the term ‘suitcase campus’ said the other day, but in past eras students never left, there were always things to do on campus. This gives students a new invigoration to host.”
Even well-intentioned and necessary efforts to improve campus life and dissuade students from packing their travel bags on the weekends are difficult to manifest, however, especially for small colleges and universities dealing with the strain caused by slipping higher education enrollment rates across the country. Members of the board of trustees see the Community Center as a tour de force for the College, which is seemingly overcoming at least some of the financial trials similar institutions currently face.
“This is a real sign of strength,” said Greg Estell ’85, a member of the board of trustees. “It’s especially a sign of strength given the economic conditions that are facing so many other schools. Not a lot of places have the capacity or the foresight to launch projects like this right now.”
Beyond economic perils, many colleges are worried that the increasing number of people pursuing online education and degrees spells danger for higher education as currently conceived and could strike a death blow to some institutes of higher learning. In light of those general concerns, Wabash’s construction of a new campus building seems quite bold.
“We are very intentionally making the Community Center a focal point for a personal residential living experience when there is so much doubt about whether the model of in-person, residential education can thrive,” said Greg Castanias ’87, a member of the board of trustees. “It’s not just that we are making a bet on that. We know that it works because we’ve been doing it for close to 200 years, and we’ve been doing it extraordinarily well.”
While the predictions for what the Community Center will bring to campus are abundant and positive, the building process has already suffered hiccups. The College is seeking financing from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is offering extraordinarily favorable lending terms to Wabash. However, the destruction of Sparks and the commencement of construction on the new building has been delayed while the College checks the necessary boxes to fulfill the lending agreement and waits for the Department of Agriculture to approve its progress. Furthermore, executive orders relating to federal grant spending freezes have created greater uncertainty and are actively evolving.
“It is not in any way or shape or form the College taking its own sweet time or delays caused by anything other than the slow role of government bureaucracy,” said Castanias. “But the fact of the matter is that we anticipate that those approvals will be final relatively soon.”
In light of the delays in the government’s approval of the Community Center, the projected opening date of fall 2026 is in serious doubt.
“We don’t have the ability to reverse time,” said Estell. “Fall of 2026 would be miraculous at this point, but the end of that academic year, 2027, that’s realistic.”
Even though the opening date will be later than at first expected, the mood Saturday remained high. Audience members gave an especially loud round of applause to Jack Engledow ’53, who was a student when the Sparks Center groundbreaking was held 72 years ago and a picture of Engledow and president Frank Hugh Sparks appeared in The Indianapolis Star. Engledow remembered that day fondly this past Saturday.
“It was an exciting time,” said Engledow. “We didn’t have anything comparable to this [the Sparks Center], so at the time it served a necessary purpose.”
Over time the Sparks Center’s purpose and popularity among students waned, but a similar hope for the future that abounded in 1953 is prominent for some still.
“The Sparks Center was a great, state-of-the-art building for its time, but its time has passed,” said Castanias. “What is going to appear in its place is going to be a remarkable, even transformational, change for the culture of the College, and transformational in ways that can only be positive.”