About NMH Northfield

Opening Remarks

• Landscape/architectural history project
• Real estate: marketing the Northfield campus
• Special projects and special project fundraising
• Honoring Northfield: closing events; the move to Gill
• Communications

We will manage the first four topics with your help in small groups, facilitated by Northfield stewardship committee members.

• Becky Kennedy ’67 will lead the discussion on the history project. We recognize the importance of documenting and cataloguing the important sites on the Northfield campus. With the marvelous help and assistance of Cynthia Zaitzevsky ’52, we are ready to talk with firms that can help us do this work. We would like your advice on the current history project and suggestions of other studies that might be important in capturing the architectural, historical, and ecological significance of the Northfield campus.
• Buzz Constable, the only non trustee on the stewardship committee and who functions as our kind owners' representative, has been integral to our learning and understanding of the process of reuse and redevelopment. He will lead a group in a discussion of efforts to market the school and bring the Northfield campus to the attention of potential user.
• Bob Macomber will facilitate a discussion of special project ideas related to the Northfield campus and the transition to one campus. We want to coordinate with alumni groups already planning projects and gifts, and anticipate projects that should be under consideration.
• Don McNemar will lead a discussion on honoring Northfield. Don has had experience of as the head of the Phillips Academy Andover in a process to oversee the disposition of the Abbott campus facilities when the two schools merged.

The fifth topic on our agenda, Communicating the Future, is an effort designed to help efforts underway to raise the profile of the school by doing a better job of defining our unique strategy in education and the special meaning of being a Northfield Mount Hermon graduate. Northfield Mount Hermon and the educations we have all received here have changed from generation to generation, but we all share a common bond. Being a NMH graduate has placed an immutable marker on us.

The communication session will be conducted by Jeff Wack, a consultant working with the school. To my mind this is one of the most important activities of the day. We have to find the terms, the symbols, and the facts that help people understand what this school accomplishes in the lives of its students the thing that binds us all together.

Well, as you can see, we have a very full day ahead, and we will be working very hard. Before we get started on all this, we’d like to share a bit more information about what we have been doing and bring everyone to the same detailed understanding of what we have learned so far.

Reuse Criteria (adopted by the NMH trustees, November 2004)
The extent to which uses are consistent with, and preferably symbiotic with the ongoing educational and cultural missions and programs of the Northfield Mount Hermon School.

The extent to which a future user or users will be able productively to utilize the campus, thereby allowing the school to realize most fully the economic value of the Northfield campus.

The extent to which uses are consistent with the character of the Town of Northfield and respect the history of the Northfield campus. This includes very careful attention to the location and appearance of any new construction.

Whether in connection with sales, leases or joint venture arrangements, the extent to which a future user or users will provide the school with immediate cash flow while realizing long-term value from the property as well as assurances about the appropriateness of its use or uses.

Mandate of the Northfield Stewardship Committee
To oversee the development of proposals for presentation to the NMH Board of Trustees for the future use of the Northfield campus facilities and for non-contiguous Northfield Mount Hermon land, and to ensure such proposals are evaluated for consistency with the School’s mission and financial needs.

Mandate of the Northfield Campus Advisors
To bring special expertise to the work of identifying adaptive reuses for the Northfield Campus. The advisors serve individually or in small groups and occasionally as a body of the whole to review potential reuses, evaluate and assess their potential impact, conduct research or planning and make recommendations as need and requested by the President of the School in support of the work of the Northfield Stewardship committee.

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