Tours planned for new Ferris gym-fitness facility
The Ferris boys’ basketball team recently brought home the state championship, and now the athletes will have a state-of-the-art facility in which to show off their latest trophy.
Ferris High School will unveil its new gym and fitness complex with tours before the Ham on Regal performances today and Friday from 6 to 7 p.m. and Saturday from 4 to 7 p.m.
The $15 million facility was paid for mostly with funds from the 2003 school bond approved by voters and with $5.5 million in state matching funds.
The new building is 55,000 square feet and boasts a mat room with a cushioned floor for wrestling and aerobics, a fitness room, a concessions area for game nights, an auxiliary gym for physical education classes and smaller games, a laundry and lots of storage space, according to Greg Brown, director of capital projects for Spokane Public Schools.
The hallways are lined with cases for trophies, and soon the banners of previous championships will move into the new facility.
The main gym has seating for 1,650 spectators, and the court is named after Wayne Gilman, the late coach of the Saxons’ boys basketball team. The old court was also named for the longtime coach.
Designed by NAC Architecture, the building looks much like an Alpine ski lodge and has lots of windows to bring in natural light,. It overlooks the football field below.
Brown said focus groups of students, teachers, alumni and others were asked what they would hope for in a building, and they wanted it to reflect the woodsy area of the school.
“People didn’t want to see just a big box,” he said.
Levernier Construction started work on the project in the summer of 2005 and will be finished just in time for the tours.
Around 40 new parking spots were also created, and in the future planners want to be able to move the student parking away from Regal Street.
Students won’t officially move into the building until they return from spring break. The official grand opening and dedication will be April 9 from 9:45 to 10:30 a.m.
The old, 48,000-square-foot, boxy gym was small and didn’t have a lot of seating for games. During big events, there weren’t enough restrooms.
The roof is beginning to sag in places.
When the school opened in 1963, girls sports weren’t a priority, and the girls’ facilities weren’t equal to those of the boys.
Now the locker rooms are the same size, and the girls have lockers for storing bulky sports equipment like the boys have.
For now, the old gym will be used as a storage facility for furniture from Shadle Park High School and Rogers High School while their new gyms are being completed. The old Ferris gym eventually will be torn down to make way for new buildings.
This is the first project completed in the master plan the school district has for the entire campus. Other projects will follow and be paid for with funds from a planned school bond that voters will consider in 2009.