Troy embraces new, sparkling home: Auburn High School unveils latest phase

Published 12:26 pm Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Buckets of paint, spools of wire and cable, ceiling tiles cheek by jowl with floor mats and lighting fixtures.

On shiny gymnasium floors, boxes fat with trophies, jerseys and banners, primed to take their places on walls and in trophy cases still-a-building.

Boot imprints along the main hall lead you to a ladder, on which two legs in Levi’s appear to be standing on their own. A closer look reveals they are actually attached to a worker, whose upper half is just then poking about in the guts of the ventilation system.

With little more than mere days from the hour Auburn High School opens its doors for fall quarter, the place is a bit messy. But when the opening bell clangs on Wednesday, Sept. 9, Phase 2 of the $110 million high school project is gonna look like a million bucks.

Skeptical? Check out the aggressive final contractor’s cleaning schedule, hanging on a wall.

“We have been assured that it’ll all be ready for kids,” said AHS Assistant Principal DeeAnna Kilga.

Between the Performing Arts Center and the Automotive Technology Building, the second of the three phases of the high school’s redo is something to see.

In its 109,000-square-foot embrace, Phase 2 enfolds three gymnasiums: a cavernous main, already festooned with banners attesting to the school’s past and present sports greatness; a smaller auxiliary gym; and a wrestling gym.

There’s a weight room as yet without weights and classrooms for the drama, choir, band, orchestra and horticulture programs.

Automotive Technology is staying where it is, though with seismic, technology, handicap accessibility and other upgrades to the building. Its exterior sports a new, red brick finish to match the rest of the campus.

The Performing Arts Center on the north end is nearing the end of an extensive remodeling. It won’t be ready until October, so nobody who is not a somebody with a hardhat and a toolset gets inside to check it out.

That includes theater arts teacher Warren Kerr.

Nearly lost in his new digs, chock-a-block with boxes and costumes, he’s been busy doing dull stuff, like culling old files. But soon, he and his students will swing into rehearsal for the first production of the fall, Romeo and Juliet, which is scheduled in the PAC for the first weekend in November.

Rehearsals will be in this room, though at the moment, anything approaching movement in this crowded space seems a dicey proposition.

“For us, trying to make everything fit is the challenge. And since we don’t have the PAC open yet, stuff that I normally store in the PAC gets to be stored in here. Hence, my lovely mess,” Kerr said with a chuckle, right arm sweeping out over his domain.

“They will turn the PAC over to us in September,” Jeff Grose, Auburn School District’s executive director of capital projects, said of the contractor, Lydig Construction. “There’ll be outside users using the PAC in October.”

Students and staff moved into the Phase 1 part of the project in September 2014. At 160,000 square feet, it is the main classroom building, complete with a commons, a kitchen and CTE areas.

Phase 3 is to be completed in July of 2016. Site improvements include synthetic turf baseball and softball fields, student and event parking lots and tennis courts.

“We’re on time and on budget,” Grose said.