After a year and three months and several construction delays, the new gym at the Grafton Complex is complete.
Mark Tschirhart, associate director for capital plans and improvement, announced the $1.8 million gym was ready to go at Monday night’s York County School Board meeting .
Since the Grafton Complex was built in the 1990s, middle school and high school students in the building shared a main gym and a smaller auxiliary gym. Growing enrollment and a larger athletics program has created the need for a third gym.
Physical education classes, the varsity boys basketball, varsity girls basketball team, junior varsity boys basketball, junior varsity girls basketball and middle varsity boys basketball teams all vie for gym space to schedule practices, games and activities.
Grafton High’s athletic director, Laura Sutton, said the new gym would be a welcome change that will alleviate current game and practice scheduling conflicts.
In October 2012, crews began construction on a third gym, which also required a change to traffic patterns around the complex. Construction delayed when crews discovered the drawings of the underground piping were inaccurate. Several pipes had to be moved before the gym walls could be erected.
The piping work turned into a domino effect: When one pipe needed to be moved, there would be another pipe in the way along the route that had to also be moved. After all pipes were in place, construction had to be halted for another 60 days to ensure they did not settle improperly.
In September 2013 after several weather-related delays over the summer, crews had all the walls up, the locker rooms put together and gym equipment — like basketball goals — on its way to the site. Installation of the gym floor, which took place over the last few months, had to wait until the building was sealed and all the doors were in place to prevent moisture from ruining the wood.
During construction, athletic teams and students used two other gyms — the main gym and an auxiliary gym — for practice and physical education use. The new gym, also for auxiliary use, has a few improvements over the older auxiliary gym, which include a wood floor instead of a rubber floor, windows, bathrooms and bleachers.
Tschirhart said the third gym should be open for school use today, pending the inclement weather.
