Construction Update - September 2022
Pardon the mess! Sunburst is undergoing renovations!
When we moved into our building in 2014, we occupied only about 1800 sq ft of the space and had 6 rooms for lessons. The entire floor had been a hair salon for the previous 15 years (Timothy’s for the Squirrel Hill history buffs) and before that a dentist, a restaurant, and even
an infamous gambling club. As our school grew, we were able to add the remainder of the floor in two chunks, the final section was the former law office which was added in late 2019. Our current project is to tie all of these different spaces into one cohesive space that’s perfect for music lessons, group programs, performances, and more. Or as we’ve been joking, take all the bad rooms and turn them into good rooms. Before diving in we'd like to thank Kolano Design for all of their awesome work on this project!
The project is being broken into phases so that we only have a few rooms closed at a time. The first phase of the project is scheduled to be completed next week! In this section, we’re turning the former law office area into 5 lesson rooms, a new administrative office, the reception area, an instrument workshop, a kitchenette, and a bathroom. Here’s the layout:
Once phase I is complete, we’ll be moving lessons out of current rooms 10, 11, 12 & 14 and into the 5 new rooms, and temporarily into the new administrative office.
Phases II and III will involve the back left quadrant of the school. In Phase II the current room 12 (our large room for Explore classes) will be converted into smaller rooms which allow us to make the hallway into a loop. In phase III the small rooms along the outside of the building (current 7,8,9) will be rolled together into one big room which will be the new home for our early childhood programming.
While rooms for different purposes will have different degrees of soundproofing, all of the rooms will have a level of sound isolation that’s well above typical office construction. The new rooms 6 and 8 as shown above will be smaller rooms but with the same sound isolation measures as our band rooms, which will allow all of our drum students to play on standard kits at every lesson–a dream of our drum team has been dreaming for years!
Finally, Phase IV of the project will be finishing the waiting room, expanding the stage, etc.
The project is currently in full swing, and we anticipate being completely finished in the next few months. We will be needing to shuffle students and teachers to different rooms as we move through the phases and for that, we appreciate your patience!
Please let us know if you have any questions, comments, feedback, etc; we can’t wait to share this amazing new space with everybody!
