Auburn High School students were treated to a new feature when classes resumed Monday after Thanksgiving break.
A permanent parking lot.
Jeff Grose, Auburn School District’s executive director of capital projects, said the opening of the north lot has created 417 parking stalls and given the high school 618 spaces. Before the project, there were 376 parking stalls.
In addition to providing more space for commuters attending events at the school’s Performing Arts Center and Auburn Memorial Stadium, Grose said the project comes with a variety of safety improvements and other amenities.
LED lights have been installed throughout the lot, and there are “definitive pedestrian parkways” leading to Auburn Memorial Stadium. Along with those enhancements, Grose said, disabled parking spaces have been expanded.
“We’re looking at a much safer improved parking lot,” he said.
Given the opening of the new lot, Grose said, the temporary parking facility along E Street Northeast will close. Grose said construction of eight new tennis courts, to include a storage building, small bleachers, fencing, LED lights and a concrete practice wall, will begin at that lot as soon as the temporary parking lot is demolished. Because the coating used to seal those courts requires warmer weather, he said, that project is not scheduled for completion until next summer.
That is not the only project remaining at the school, which was rebuilt after voters approved a $110 modernization and reconstruction bond in November 2012. Synthetic turf is being installed on the high school’s baseball and fastpitch fields. A similar project is underway at Auburn Riverside High School.
Grose said baseball and fastpitch teams at Auburn and Auburn Riverside sometimes have had to play games at Auburn Mountainview, where synthetic turf fields were installed when the school opened in 2005, during inclement weather.
“Now, each high school has its own synthetic turf field,” Grose said. “They can get out there in any conditions and practice.”
He said those projects should be finished Feb. 16. The first day of practice for baseball and fastpitch teams is Feb. 29.
