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New addition will provide more room for sisters
If you’ve visited Mount St. Mary Convent recently, you’ve seen great changes in our “back yard.” The sisters are adding 32 apartment-style units east of the original convent building. Work started on the building in August and is expected to be completed in December 2008.
A number of factors figured into the decision to add more living space. With reconfiguration, more than 20 sisters from the former Medaille congregation have relocated to Wichita. At about the same time, twenty rooms for sisters were lost when the north end of the motherhouse was converted into the Magnificat retreat and spirituality center. In addition, there is a need for more space for Wichita sisters who have lived elsewhere as they retire and move back to the Mount. There are also plans to convert sisters’ rooms in another area of the convent to guest rooms, which will further reduce living space for sisters.
Rooms in the new addition are designed as apartments with a bedroom, bathroom, living room and small kitchen, although the sisters will continue to share meals in the Mount dining room. The design allows for the option of offering housing to lay people in the future. This is currently done in the Tipton, Ind., motherhouse, where sisters’ rooms are side-by-side with apartments for seniors and guest rooms for visitors.
The new addition will be joined to the main building through a covered walkway. It will include underground parking for the sisters. A separate storage building is also being constructed and a maintenance building is being remodeled. The exterior is designed to blend well with the motherhouse architecture and that of Sheridan Village, the sisters’ low-income retirement apartment building south of the Mount.