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Approximately 90 major donors, including alumni, parents, members of the board of trustees and other supporters, attended the event.
The 32,000-foot educational facility will provide teaching and learning environments for the school’s new engineering track, as well as additional academic courses in its 16 classrooms.
It will also include a dining gallery, cafeteria and loggia, which will encompass an area for student lunches and a venue for special events and gatherings.
“Through our new educational center, we will be able to provide additional classrooms and new educational offerings for our students, as well as a light-filled dining facility to replace the one in Immaculata Hall, which was built in the early 1950s,” said the Rev. James Heuser, the school’s director and president.
When the new facility is finished, the current cafeteria will be transformed into a second gym for the sports of fencing and wrestling.
The new venue is being funded through the school’s Centennial Campaign, an effort to raise $10 million for expansions at Bosco Prep’s 35-acre campus.
Over 650 alumni and parents have contributed to the campaign.
The school has a student enrollment of 850 students, with 60 percent residing in Bergen and Passaic Counties, and 40 percent residing in Rockland and Orange Counties in New York.
Along with the educational center, plans call for a new 1,500- foot Sacred Heart Chapel to be added to the front of Immaculata Hall, as well as a set of cascading exterior steps.
Additional site work will include a central quadrangle, new sidewalks, improved traffic flow for buses and cars and additional parking lots.
“This will create a true campus quad,” said Heuser. “Guided by our excellent faculty, our students will use these facilities as St. John Bosco had planned, to find here 'a home, a school, a church, a playground.'”
Preceding the groundbreaking, a mass of gratitude was celebrated by the Rev. Steve Shafran, a graduate of the school in 1974.
A barbeque luncheon for the guests followed the groundbreaking ceremony.
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