District trying to fit everything on one campus

What if all school sports were played at the same location?

The Grand Coulee Dam School District Board of Directors recently looked at slides of what the Lake Roosevelt Schools campus could look like under different options.

The designs, from the school's recently hired NAC Architecture, showed a football/soccer field with a track around it being located near the current one in Coulee Dam, but at a different angle. A separate baseball field and softball field could fit near it. A new gym could be built near the current one. And new tennis courts might fit somewhere there as well.

Not all those items couldn't fit in that space if the tennis courts stayed where they are.

Those courts had a $246,000 rebuild in 2015.

Moving the district administrative office, and the preschool to the main campus is another goal.

With the bus garage being moved to make room for consolidated athletic fields, a new location for a bus garage would also need to be figured out.

Parking lots were also discussed.

The goal is to have almost everything district-related on one main campus, rather than having some facilities in Coulee Dam, and others at the former middle school in Grand Coulee.

"Key design factors" listed on the slide show include maximizing site/efficiency and participant safety.

The costs of everything, or just how much dirt would need to be moved with hillsides being carved into, is not known yet.

"The next move would be a geological survey," Superintendent Paul Turner told The Star. "That really gives the architect a better understanding of the potential amount of dirt that needs moved." 

"You need ideas to get money," Turner noted, and once the district knows what is wanted, exactly, architects can figure out how much the project costs, and then go after money.

With multiple concepts of just how things could be laid out, Turner emphasized to the board the importance of getting community input on the ideas.

Board members at a July 26 meeting tossed around the idea of being able to use the softball fields at North Dam Park for softball, with it being such a tight squeeze to fit everything in Coulee Dam.

"Nothing's in stone here, that's why we want public input," Turner said, adding that, in the coming weeks, some kind of public meeting would be organized for the public to view the designs and discuss them.