Renovations for the Ocky Dining Hall!

The Ockanick-Inn, also known as the Ocky Dining Hall, is being restored and getting some new tables, and it’s all designed to improve the camper/participant experience! As you may recall from early 2019, the Ocky Bowl and Dining Hall have been areas of focus for updates and restoration work. The goal is to provide a more welcoming, enjoyable camp experience for our summer camp campers, and our group participants. Read this article from April 2019 to learn more about the Ocky Bowl upgrades. Now that the Ocky Bowl upgrades are complete, we are excited to share the next phase of the work being done to freshen up the Dining Hall, and improve the camper experience.

In the Ocky Dining Hall, the walls are being stripped and sealed by Revive Painting, to clean off years of grime and dirt, and also to preserve the natural wood tones and color for years to come. A new floor will be put down on top of the cold, cement slab to provide a warmer, more welcoming atmosphere.

Most importantly, we will be utilizing 16-person oval tables moving forward rather than the traditional 8-person rectangle tables. (Do not fret, these tables will be repurposed elsewhere on the property!). The 16-person oval tables will allow Ocky “buddy-cabin” groups to sit together during meals to better foster the building of relationships at camp during mealtimes. Lake Stockwell Day Camp groups will also be able to seat more per table which will help foster the “family’ feel that Stockwell has developed, as entire groups will be able to sit next to each other at 2 tables rather than being spread throughout a long row of smaller tables.

We began exploring alternatives to our traditional rectangle tables approximately 2 years ago when we observed that more and more of our participant groups during our Outdoor Center seasons were pushing the rectangle tables together. They often told us that they did so to form larger tables so more people could eat together, so they could create more elbow room between campers, and so they could allow folks to better see one-another at the table. Thereafter, we began exploring a variety of table sizes and shapes to better foster community and relationship building during meals.

As the process unfolded, it became clear that larger oval tables accomplished all of these objectives, while still allowing us to fit our traditional camper numbers inside of the dining hall. The oval tables allow all campers to easily see one-another, allow us to fit more campers at a table to increase camper engagement and interaction, and provide more space for each individual camper.

We are excited to unveil the finished project at our upcoming Family Dinner Night on Sunday, February 16!

If you haven’t yet registered for the *free* event, please do so at www.ycamp.org. In the meantime, we’ll be sure to post some updates when the project is complete!