Thursday, March 28, 2024

School District exploring adding new athletic room to high school

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A number of things were cut from the high school project to get it under budget. One of those was an athletic room to house the wrestlers and serve other needs. Since the money is now available, the District is considering adding a new athletic room, after all.
“This is in the high school athletic area. This is the existing locker, auxiliary gym, main gym. We’re putting in rest rooms, concession stand, visiting team change room. The refs change room. The art room is here,” said John Henri, construction liaison, at the March 26 Cascade School Board meeting. “You come up this hallway to the athletic wing. On one side there is nothing other than parking or landscaping. The question came up, what if we close that in?”
Board member Kristen Wood said that was supposed to be an outdoor commons area. Superintendent Bill Motsenbocker said there was still room for that.
“The question came up, what would it take to do that? We don’t have a wrestling room or cheerleader room. We don’t have a lot of things we had to give up,” Henri said.
Motsenbocker said he was looking at the plans one day and came up with the idea.
“If we put one wall in there and moved the roof on top of it, we could do a simple space in there with a concrete floor, concrete walls. We would have place for our wrestlers to practice. It would actually be double the amount of space they are going to be in, which would be the weight room at the middle school,” Motsenbocker said.
The cheerleaders don’t have any place to go, often practicing in the commons, Motsenbocker said. Plus, they also have big problems with gym space in early spring, when all the spring sports teams are in there trying to practice.
“We also have big problems in the spring where the baseball and softball teams have nowhere to go. The soccer team we don’t let in the big gym. We don’t let anything in the big gym that isn’t a racket or court sports because of the damage,” Motsenbocker said. “We going to finish the project most likely under budget. How much would it cost to just shell that in, even if had to wait a year to finish it? We actually think, with the contingency we haven’t had to spend yet, we could probably finish that thing off, which would be about 3,300 square feet.”
Motsenbocker said they have been working with the high school architects, NAC, who also has ideas how they might increase the space, but they don’t know how much it would cost. He said NAC is working up two schematic drawings for the school district to consider. Nothing is committed yet, Motsenbocker said.
“If we were going to do this, it’s going to be a durable space, concrete slab, masonry walls or plywood walls. Hard walls. Then you wouldn’t have the damage we are starting to see in the auxiliary gym,” Henri said. “The batting cage is scratching the brand new floor. We had a baseball through one of the windows in a door already. Something is knocking the pads off the wall. We’re seeing things in the auxiliary gym we really don’t like. If we make this durable, this could solve that problem.”
Henri said this is just in the early stages. After getting ahold of NAC and having a meeting, a drawing came back, so they could figure out a rough cost and make a decision.
“If we are going to do this, we should try to do it when we do this (second construction phase), so we save the cost of remobilizing and work behind the building instead. Right now, we’re really expediting this to see if we can find out what it will cost and how we could get it done this fall, so we can make a decision if we’re going to do it,” Henri said.
During the wrestling season, there would be mats on the floor, but when the season was over, the mats would be stacked so it would basically just be concrete floor.
“The cheerleaders could take the mats out, if they want. The sound system in the ceiling, a couple water fountains, lights, HVAC, storage,” Motsenbocker said.
Spring sports needs a space that is more durable, said Board member Carrie Sorensen. Henri said they are not just going to shell it out. He expects it will look pretty classy.
“It would look like we planned it all along. Right now, it is exploratory. We haven’t made any decisions. We’re trying to expedite this so we can save money by doing it this fall. If we were to wait, it would be 50 to 100 percent more expensive,” Henri said. “Also structural steel costs are going up because of the new tariffs. I’ve been told today they’ve already gone up in anticipation.”
Motsenbocker said, in his opinion, that would take care of everything they wanted to do but really were not able to do until they found out where they were, contingency wise. He said the wrestling coach, Jesus Sandoval, is pretty excited.
“I see another positive impact too. Where the current weight room at IRMS was tentatively schedule to be the wrestling room, would open it up and give IRMS the ability to shift their programs around. One of the possibilities was bringing preschool to that area,” said School District Finance Director Dwight Remick. “It gives us some growing room at IRMS that is definitely needed.”
Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.

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