The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Hamilton College partners with City of Rome for new boathouse
CLINTON, N.Y. » Working closely with the City of Rome, Hamilton College is on the verge of breaking ground this April for a new $2 million boathouse located on the Erie Canal in Rome’s Bellamy Harbor Park.
Purchase of the land was through the Rome Industrial Development Corporation following unanimous approval by the City Council last June.
“The proposed boathouse facility is going to be beautiful and will really complement the Navigation Center area,” Mayor Jacqueline Izzo said in a news release from Hamilton College.
“The new facility will afford our coaches and student-athletes the amenities necessary to enhance our already successful rowing program,” said Director of Athletics Jon Hind. “We have enjoyed our long partnership with the city of Rome, and we look forward to assisting with the development and programming of Bellamy Harbor Park.”
The boathouse will be a significant enhancement from the current rented facility used by the Hamilton men’s and women’s rowing teams. It will include a much larger boat storage and operations area, a team meeting room, a coaching office, and indoor restrooms. The project has been made possible with gifts raised and contributed over the past two years, primarily by alumni rowers.
The design, engineering, landscape, mechanical, and construction services will be completed entirely by upstate New York companies. After an initial design competition, Holt Architects of Ithaca was selected as the building architect.
Their design team included Erdman Anthony of Rochester (mechanical and electrical), Trowbridge, Wolf and Michaels of Ithaca (site and landscape), and Delta Engineers of Vernon (civil engineering). The con
struction contract has been awarded to Beebe Construction Services.
The boathouse location itself is an advantage. “The stretch of water on the Erie Canal in front of the new site is connected to the Mohawk River and opens up earlier in spring,” explains James Lister, head coach for women’s and men’s rowing. “This is a huge gain for the program and will allow us to gain two more weeks of rowing outside in the spring.”
More time on the water brings better results, says Steven Larson ‘03, who thinks the program’s upward trajectory will continue. “Better results mean better recruits, and better recruits means more people coming in, more fundraising, better equipment. Better equipment yields better results,” Larson says.
Rower Ann-sophie Koglin ‘20, who was a team captain, takes pride in the program’s humble roots, but she, too, thinks the new boathouse will help attract rowers. Koglin remembers that when she first visited Hamilton for an overnight she was struck by the contrast between the beautiful campus and the sub-standard boathouse. Not that that inhibited her success. She and her team earned an at-large bid in the 2019 NCAA championship, and she helped lead the varsity 8 to a top 10 ranking in the final Division III coaches’ poll in each of her first three seasons.
Besides qualifying for the NCAA championship and earning a sixth-place team ranking, the women’s team had a fourth-place finish in the 2019 Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston. For the past two years, the men’s team has been a silver medalist in the varsity 8+ and in 2019 finished just one second behind the winning team.