New activity center will give Carmel Marching Greyhounds indoor rehearsal, storage space
The Carmel High School marching band and winter guard are getting a new indoor rehearsal and storage space.
In addition to performing arts, the new building will be used for athletics, student groups and more.
The Carmel Clay School Board approved the construction of a CHS activity center in a 4-0 vote on Monday night. Board president Katie Browning was absent. The board heard a presentation about the need for the building at its April meeting.
The $9.5 million facility, tentatively named the Greyhound Activities Center, will be north of the football stadium, adjacent to two practice fields.
Construction is expected to start in early 2023 and be complete in August 2024. The district will fund it with the issuance of bonds, but there will be no tax increase and no referendum dollars used, said Roger McMichael, associate superintendent for the district.
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Space for the Marching Greyhounds
Chris Kreke, the chairperson for the high school performing arts department, told the school board in April that a space like this was badly needed and has been on his mind for years.
Currently, the more than 350 students in the CHS Marching Greyhounds rehearse outdoors on asphalt parking lots. Kreke said that allows the band to have the two football fields of space it needs to rehearse.
While the marching band will still use the outdoor space, the activity center will fulfill several other needs, he said.
It will provide storage as well as restrooms and dressing rooms that are nearby to rehearsal space and the stadium for performances, he said then. It also will give the band a place to rehearse in cases of severe weather.
For the roughly 150 members of the three winter guards, it will be a space to practice in the winter months when scheduling gym space in the high school becomes tight.
“This is a facility that is well needed by our students,” Kreke said in April. “…something that can serve both the performing arts students, the marching band students, the winter guard students (and) a lot of other events within performing arts department that we could move to a facility of this size, along with the rest of Carmel High School.”
In addition to marching band and winter guard, the center will have several other uses, CHS administrators Karen McDaniel, associate principal, and Jim Inskeep, athletic director, told the board in April.
Those include dances, Carmel GradFest and after prom. Plus, it would be a space to move student government events like trick-or-treat indoors in case of bad weather.
The center could also be used as a reunification site during an emergency or if a football game is canceled due to storms, students could wait at the center for their ride, the administrators said.
Center will be bigger than a football field
The building will be about 85,000 square feet with about 9,000 square feet used for storage, dressing rooms, restrooms and the entry way, Bill Payne of Fanning Howey, an architecture, interiors and engineering firm, told the school board at its April meeting.
Payne said the remainder of the building will be a space the size of a football field — including end zones — along with added space on the perimeter for safety, setup and observation.
Inskeep added that while athletics could use the building, there are no plans for basketball hoops or goal posts.
The school district is also currently renovating and expanding the performing arts space inside the high school and working on several athletics projects including updates to Hartman Baseball Complex and Murray Soccer Stadium and a natatorium project that includes renovations and a new competition pool.
Call IndyStar education reporter MJ Slaby at 317-447-1586 or email her at mslaby@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @mjslaby.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Carmel High School: New activity center add space for marching band
