While prep schools were traditionally styled after monasteries or even prisons and orphanages, with spartan facilities and scant amenities, Town and Country magazine notes the current trend in education toward lavish campuses with concierge services where “students live in the lap of luxury while learning how to accumulate it.”
With its scenic and expensively renovated campus, Richard E Rich Academy epitomizes the concierge model, and rumors of budget shortfalls and endowment losses have attracted interest in the school’s significant real estate holdings. It began when a member of the Board of Trustees, knowledgeable about Richard Rich’s financial woes, made a lowball offer on the school’s luxe Berkshires Retreat House where Board meetings are often held.
As word spread through the Board of this possible sale, a luxury hotel group owned by another Board member expressed interest in a cash offer on the historic campus. The Chair of the Board of Trustees has been quick to reassure the Rich E Rich community that the future of the academy is safe and no sales have been made. The Chair also made it clear that construction on the deluxe Varsity Lacrosse Gym that will bear his name, and that will include its own sauna rooms, juice bar, indoor/outdoor swimming pool, and massage suite, will be ready for the ten varsity players and select donors in September.