Climbing To Success: Iconic Pathfinder Staircase To Be Replaced Soon

After a successful fundraising effort, The Pathfinder School is gearing up to replace its iconic, decades-old 48-step outdoor staircase that students climb to their classrooms each morning.

With the school currently celebrating its Golden Anniversary, staff, students, and parents of the past and present have come together to plan and fundraise $235,000 for the project. Carew says that additional funds for the staircase were secured through grants.

The existing stairway is made up of 48 steps without any landings, which Carew says makes for a challenging ascension for campus users.

As alumni Pathfinder parent Samantha Vreeland recalls of her childrens' years at the school, “The stairs at Pathfinder were definitely a topic of conversation to everyone who had to climb them, but I believe it was something my kids took pride in having to do every day, multiple times a day.”

Pathfinder was established in 1972 as a K-12 institution, but now serves Pre-Kindergarten through 8th grade.

Taryn Carew, The Pathfinder School’s advancement director, says that it was those one-time highschoolers of the 1970’s who built the existing staircase to replace a steep wooden one that came with the property. With the help of a parent architect, Carew says that the students, “Did the forms, then the cement mixer came in, they poured cement and leveled it off.” The whole process was completed in about a week and she says that, “Those are the current stairs we have.”

The rudimentary construction has required continuous concrete patching over the years.

The new staircase will be located to the north of the current structure and, says Carew, will “serpentine” up the hill to ease the trek.

The new plans feature a total of 72 stairs and four landing spots. The landings, approximately 13 feet wide, will incorporate seat walls where students, teachers, and parents can take a break to catch their breath on their way to and from class. “We joke that we need to install an espresso bar for the morning,” laughed Carew.

“People really felt called to support it and it was interesting because talking to these parents, whether alumni parents or current parents, we found that the staircase meant just as much to them as it did to their kids,” said Carew. “They’d recall walking their kids up to preschool or you know, being pregnant and walking up the stairs, or even the year that their kids stopped going up the stairs because they’d graduated to the lower campus. They're just a really iconic and symbolic part of the school.”

Funds aren’t the only thing Pathfinder’s student/parent community is donating to the project. The excavation of the old staircase is being done voluntarily by members of Leelanau’s KAL Excavating Co team, something Carew says allows the project to unfold at an unrushed pace. “The dismantling of the old staircase is less problematic than we could’ve ever imagined, because it's our [own] community that is helping make that part of the project a success,” said Carew.

Meanwhile, construction of the new staircase will be handled by Len Allgaier and the crew at Peninsula Pavers, who will utilize granite for the new build.

Even the blueprint for the new staircase was put together by Pathfinder parent and designer Maria Tucker, whose concept allows for students and staff to use the old staircase during the construction of the new one.

Tucker also took the school’s natural surroundings into account when sketching up the plans. “It was designed around some big, beautiful mature trees,” noted Carew, “So the way it kind of snakes up the hill is for that reason.”

The private, nonprofit school, which sits on 22 wooded acres, incorporates the outdoors throughout its curriculum. “Environmentalism is a value of our school. Being mindful of our environment, being mindful of who we are and the stewardship that's needed in our footprint on our land,” said Carew of the school’s plans to leave the trees surrounding the blueprint undisturbed.

Carew says the accessible driveway, which is available to students, staff, and visitors who are unable to use stairs, will remain just where it is and that the school is hoping for a fall completion on the new stairs.

A celebration will follow. So will a proper send-off for the old set, a farewell that the Pathfinder community wants to acknowledge after serving the campus for so long. “We'll just have simultaneous celebrations. The removal of the old stairs and the opening of the new stairs,” said Carew, “Because Pathfinder loves tradition, and we really love gathering as a community. And so we’ll create some beautiful way to commemorate this exciting event and the closing of a really big chapter.”