The Plymouth School Board will move forward with plans to upgrade a few facilities.
During Tuesday night’s School Board meeting, design plans were presented that propose updating restrooms, concessions, and bleachers at the Plymouth High School football stadium. Plans also call for an expansion of the school corporation’s Administration building.
Plymouth Schools Superintendent Dan Tyree says the school corporation should have a common theme in its athletic complexes, but there are also functional reasons to move the current football building site.
“One was to get an extended number of seats in the bleacher area, but also give us room to get people out of the parking lot,” says Tyree.
Bleacher seating at the football field currently allows for a capacity of 2-thousand. Upgrades will bring an additional 500 seats to the venue. That figure could be increased, however, depending on the width of the seats.
Several options are included in the designs, including an additional ticket booth and provide a total estimated cost of $1.9-million.
The design team – which included a recent Plymouth High School graduate – proposed constructing an additional 2,700 square feet of office and meeting space onto the Administration building. Tyree says the additional space will also allow for the storage of records that are currently being kept across the street.
“This would bring the storage back into the building right where we are and the way we’re going to build it, there’s no way we can ever turn it into office space because there’s not an elevator there,” says Tyree. “So it’s always going to be record retention.”
The School Board approved moving forward with the designs. Board members also approved moving forward with the issuance of $1.9-million in bonds.
According to the discussion, financing will be structured in a way that doesn’t seriously impact the school corporation’s Debt Servicing fund.
Construction work is expected to begin after track sectionals in May of 2016.
