crk
The expansion and renovation of the Eastport Yacht Club project was a very exciting one for me, very complicated and lengthy, and a detailed five year process. The project began with visualization of concepts and ran through to the ground breaking and finally the doors reopened on the new facility. My role in the beginning was as a liaison between the membership and the architect who had been selected to design the structure.
It was many years of back and forth and back and forth and back and forth again, between the membership and the board of directors and the architect for me to translate from one to the other the interest and needs of the expansion. The building was about 20 years old and was built for 200 members, and at the time this project was initiated the membership was at 600 voting members. So, they'd outgrown the utility of the building ten-fold for the demands the expanded membership now required.
The old building is nicely reflected in the new building I think, at least certainly in the exterior architecture. And there are some significant personality traits on the inside from the old buildling as well. There are a lot of photographs here that really need no explanation on my part, no need to add to the narrative. It's just a remarkable change from the old to the new, and from a building that was really probably dated when it was new. Despite fairly severe budget constraints I think the new club comes across as being a very modern building that will look contemporary and quite well through the next 20 years.
The new club has a great deal of reflection in it; the members told me of their personality, the mission of the club and how they hope to spend the next 20 years. As a result everything that you can see and sit in and feel and touch was selected by myself.
The success of the building, now open since the fall of 2012, has been unanimous, the membership seems to be quite happy. With the dramatic change from the old building to the new one, the growing pains in moving into a new house continue to this day, but with an overall mood of great, great satisfaction. I personally think that the interiors of the building are rather exciting as they do have a very contemporary feel but not to an extreme; and I think will look that way for quite a long time. Even being a new direction for yacht clubs which typically are, uh, staid and traditional in their interior execution, this one is still traditional but far more up to date and hopefully attractive for a long period to come.
c a r e y k i r k @ m s n . c o m 4 4 3 – 2 5 4 – 0 7 5 4 c a r e y r e i d k i r k i n c . c o m