Progress continues to be made on Creston Community School District’s various construction projects, CCSD Superintendent Steve McDermott reported to the Board of Directors during last week’s regular meeting.
According to McDermott, another pour was completed on the new parking lot at the elementary/middle school building last week.
“It won’t be long now before that’s completed,” McDermott said. “Understand, after that last pour, there will still have to be time for that concrete to cure.”
The parking spaces in the new lot, which is on the north end of the bus barn where the old gravel lot used to be, are wider, 10-feet parking spots.
Additionally, McDermott reported that plans for the site prep and dirt work for the new playground at the Early Childhood Center have been received and are being shared with the people who will do the work.
“We’re trying to keep that thing moving,” McDermott said. “Of course, we want to have it completed before winter. I’m still hopeful there.”
Work on Panther Field’s new turf field was completed in time for the start of the football season this fall, but now McDermott is ready to move forward with the rest of the improvements to the stadium area.
The next phase of work on the stadium includes new fencing, new concession areas and main gates.
“A lot of that, there’s budget for that. It’s just about timing,” McDermott said. “In my mind, I’d like to have those items completed before next fall season starts. Maybe we can clean up a couple of those items this fall, next spring and keep things moving there.”
Board Vice President Galen Zumbach asked if the ticket booth would be made bigger with these improvements.
“The outhouse is going away,” McDermott responded. “It will be a nice building. It will look like a stadium when we’re through with it. We’ve got a contemporary surface for the kids to compete on, now we need contemporary facilities around it.”
Locker room renovations
After Zumbach brought to attention during a previous meeting that some students and parents have been concerned about privacy in the shower areas of the locker rooms, McDermott reported there is progress being made to remedy those concerns.
One of the proposed ideas was to place partitions between the showers in the locker rooms. Currently, the shower rooms have a tower in the middle of the room with six shower heads coming off the center tower.
Creston Community High School Principal Bill Messerole told the board last week there is no room to place partitions between those shower heads on the tower.
“I believe [Gary Briley] has a bid, or close to it, to reconfigure that and put the shower heads on the wall on the outside,” Messerole said. “Then we can put partitions between them and a curtain that would go across. We would start in the girls and do that first, but also do that in the boys.”
By reconfiguring the shower rooms, each room will lose one shower head and be down to five total. Messerole also estimated the plumbing in the shower towers and heads to be about 30 years old, making it a good time to do something different.
Messerole reported he would like to have the shower rooms completed between the end of volleyball and the start of basketball.