New London — Mitchell College is considering a shift in focus, literally, with a plan that would reconfigure the campus center away from its current industrial view of Groton and toward the resplendent mouth of the Thames River and Long Island Sound, and would make the school's distinctive circa-1885 "Umbrella House" its signature attraction.

College President Janet Steinmayer and Centerbrook Architects and Planners will present a proposed master plan to the public at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at the Mitchell College Weller Center, and are encouraging the public to attend, see the plan, hear about the school's vision and offer comments.

Among the proposed highlights would be building a science and sailing center with a dock into the Thames River, adjacent to the Mitchell College beach; converting the red barn at Michael's Dairy to a black box theater; and creating green space along much of what is now DeBiasi Drive on the upper campus, where dormitories and the athletic center are located.

The college would also enlarge its playing fields and move roads on both the lower and upper campuses to the perimeter of its property.

Relocating roads on the lower campus, between Pequot and Montauk avenues, would open space for development of a campus center — an oval where small, New England-style administrative and academic buildings could be centered around the relocated Umbrella House.

Since July 2014 Steinmayer has been president of the 75-year-old liberal arts college, which currently has 750 students, about two-thirds of whom live on the campus.

"What we are trying to do is manage our entire facility package in a way that optimizes what we can do for programming and also helps us to define how we are going to keep our facilities in as prime condition as possible," Steinmayer said. "So you need a plan when you have 65 acres and 31 buildings as to how you're going to do that; that's a pretty complex project."

One goal is further integrating Mitchell College into the New London community, she said.

"We have a very robust program to go out and create partnerships with people in the community so that we give our students access to those resources to learn, to provide community service, to get internships, and hopefully lead to jobs and lifelong interests — and hopefully encouraging more people to stay here in southeastern Connecticut," Steinmayer said. 

For months, the college has been working with Centerbrook and with Kent + Frost Landscape Architecture to rethink the campus and develop a new master plan. 

The college's trustees are on board, said Steinmayer, who explained that various Mitchell constituencies like students, parents, alumni, faculty, staff and the local community are now being invited to see early drafts of the plan and weigh in.

She expects a final conceptual plan to be approved by February and implementation to begin shortly after, "in bits and pieces" over a five-year period. Raising funds, she said, will play a role in determining how quickly the entire campus plan is executed.

"This is more like a 10,000-foot plan. It's an overview of what we think we're going to do and then, as we finalize it, we will do deep dives into, say, how exactly would we renovate the barn, how exactly would we do a sailing center?" she said.  

A goal is to give the campus a New England seaside town feel, in part by establishing the Umbrella House as its icon and centering it on an oval, similar to a quad on other campuses.

Early in the Mitchell College history, the distinctive shingle-style house located close to Pequot Avenue served as the residence of the college president. Today it houses administrative offices and hosts events.

Under the proposed master plan, it would be moved a short distance and positioned to face the south and east, looking downriver toward the Sound.

A tower or spire would be erected to help make the house stand out even more, and it would become a student study center.

Six or eight smaller, single-story, shingle-style buildings with expansive porches would be built around the oval to replicate a seaside town and provide more academic space.

"What Centerbrook has told us is that they could count on one hand the number of colleges that have this kind of access to water with a beach," said Steinmayer. "So when you talk about natural aspects, it's very much here."

Other recent Centerbrook projects include the new exhibition building under construction at Mystic Seaport, the Ocean House in Watch Hill, restoration work on the Connecticut River Museum in Essex, and the redesign of the campus of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford.

Mitchell, with only a few buildings looking out over the water, and those looking directly across at industrial buildings, doesn't make the best use of its river proximity, Centerbrook concluded, according to Steinmayer.

The architects suggested taking advantage of the campus location, views and the shingle-style architecture of the Umbrella House, which is found in other parts of New London and places like Newport and Cape Cod.

"We want to have buildings that say to you, 'You are on the New England seashore,'" Steinmayer said.

Mitchell also wants to have its own landmark, an icon building, she said, and the Umbrella House is the perfect property to do that.

"It can be a focal point, a place where ceremonies take place, where the sun shines on it, and it becomes a symbol of the campus," she said.

Mitchell recently formed a partnership with Stonington-based New England Science & Sailing, and part of the waterfront program proposal includes a two-story boathouse in place of the current Henry Hall, the admissions and financial aid office. 

Henry Hall would be razed and rebuilt elsewhere. The second floor of the new waterfront building would be meeting and academic space.

Steinmayer said that once approved, the master plan could be implemented in stages, and said some of the projects are simple, and others, like the boathouse, would be more complicated and more costly.

"These are very bite-sized pieces. We can do one almost independently of the others," she said. "So think of it as different projects and they may come in different order, depending on who is interested in them."

Alumni and other supporters will be asked to help fund implementation of the master plan, Steinmayer said.

The college already has refurbished the original gate of the old Mitchell farm on Pequot Avenue, restoring it as closely as possible to the way it appears in old photographs. 

About 30 Adirondack chairs have been positioned in clusters of four or five on green spaces around the campus, much to the delight of students and staff who are using them.

"The campus is being used in ways it has never been used before," Steinmayer said.

Five years and more ahead, the college president said, there could be even more changes, like moving housing from the upper campus to the lower campus.

But right now the college is focusing on the immediate future and how it wants to position itself.

Steinmayer said the plan meshes well with the architecture, style, goals and personality of Mitchell.

"We want to add vibrancy to the campus and, so far, the response has been very positive," she said.

a.baldelli@theday.com

Twitter: @annbaldelli