In an unimaginable blunder that no one can quite explain, Concord Academy’s 26 million dollar Centennial Arts Center, still under construction, has been built completely upside down. The school’s largest investment in the arts to date is an architectural anomaly where the roof is the floor, the entrance is suspended mid-air, and the theater seats are bolted securely to the ceiling.
The situation is baffling. The facility was designed to house a state-of-the-art theater and playhouse, a music recital hall, a digital production lab, and various ensemble spaces. Instead, it now resembles an avant-garde art installation—or a particularly expensive practical joke. Theater students, ever adaptable, are already brainstorming performances that incorporate dangling props and audience neck exercises. The music department has reluctantly embraced the term "experimental acoustics." Faculty offices, now inconveniently located ten feet off the ground, remain largely unoccupied as no one can figure out how to get to them.
While some administrators are trying to downplay the incident, others are reportedly losing their minds. “This is a minor aesthetic issue,” claimed one school official who asked to remain anonymous, while another had to be escorted off the premises after attempting, at the risk of bodily harm, to flip the building over with his bare hands.
Additionally, efforts to determine the responsible party have gone nowhere. The architects insist the blueprints were correct, even though the construction team swears they followed the plans exactly. A commission has been set up to investigate the sequence of events that led to the center’s inverted construction, and why no one at any point put a halt to the construction process. One anonymous contractor asserts that he had serious doubts while working on the site. “I just didn’t think it was my place to say anything, but I knew something was up when my job for the day was installing sprinklers on the floor,” When asked if he expects there will be any firings as a result of the investigation, Head of School Henry Fairfax replied simply, “Heads will roll.”
Despite this monumental snafu, the Centennial Arts Center is still scheduled to open in the spring of 2025. Plans for the grand opening include a gala and a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Guests are advised to come with climbing equipment, open minds, and ergonomic neck pillows.
Editor's Note: As of April 1, 2025, the Centennial Arts Center's opening has been pushed back to 2035. The Centipede was unable to identify a reason for this delay.