The Montesano School District has relocated to 502 E. Spruce Ave., just east of the tennis courts at Montesano Junior/Senior High School, in the hopes of opening additional space for student activities.

Montesano School District Superintendent Dan Winter said that while the old office met the needs of the district, it was more practical to let students make use of the space.

“The real positive here is that it opens up space for student use, which was always the concern,” he said.

The idea to provide students with more space came after the district looked at the weight room at the junior/senior high school.

“The problem is our weight room is upstairs and it shares space with the wrestling room,” Winter said, “it’s not a safe or adequate spot for wrestlers, and wasn’t ADA compliant for the weight room.”

Eric Stanfield, physical education teacher at Montesano Junior/Senior High School, said other than ADA compliance issues, the weight room is a good space. However, as students and athletes get stronger, the weights they lift get heavier causing concern since the weight room is on the second floor.

“We have noticed some cracking in the cement of the weight room and the locker room underneath the weight room has cracking in the ceiling,” Stanfield said in an email.

The old weight room’s floor is the ceiling of the boy’s locker room and is not designed to support a weight room. The board room at the old office will eventually be turned into a weight room, though Winter says the wrestling team may make use of the facility for up to a year until the weight room is relocated. Winter says the old office should be outfitted as the new weight room by the start of the next school year.

“We’ve already done the demo; it’s not going take a lot, but we need to potentially take out a few other walls that are non-load bearing just to open up the space a little more,” he said.

Stanfield noted the new weight room will be ADA compliant.

“This is really important since we want anyone to be able to use our weight room and maximize their potential,” he said.

The district began preparations to undertake the project around this time last year, and decided on the new location for the district office mainly for a single reason.

“It was the space that the district had available, really the only available area,” Winter said.

“We tried to put it in a spot so that it would take up the least amount of space so the field could still be used for football practice, community soccer and other activities,” he added.

The new office is a modular building, meaning it was assembled in its entirety by Modern Building Systems and then moved to Spruce Avenue around the second week of March. The district made use of a limited general obligation bond, or what Winter called, “pretty much a loan,” for $325,000 in constructing and relocating the office. Those funds also went to the remodeling of Simpson Elementary last year and in addition will go towards redoing the board room for weight-purposes.

The loan allows for the district to budget the payment amounts each year for the next 10 years, “so that the district takes a smaller hit,” Winter said.

The new office still needs gutters and some landscaping work, but is completed on the inside and open for business.