YHS Academy gym floor to be replaced after nearly 60 years

Yorkville High School alumni and community residents may have the chance to purchase sections of the old high school's gym floor after it's removed this summer, school district officials say.

The floor was installed at the former high school building at 702 Game Farm Road, which now houses Yorkville High School Academy, when the school was built in 1959 and is the original floor, according to district officials.

Yorkville School District's Board of Education approved a contract with Kiefer Specialty Flooring, Inc. at its March 19 meeting for $235,050 to remove the current floor and replace it with a new hardwood gym floor. The board also approved a $23,500 contingency budget for an "unforeseen condition" during the project.

Patrick Browne, director of facility operations for the Yorkville School District, said replacing the floor has been on the district's radar for a couple years.

"It was two summers ago that we noticed we had some buckling going on in the floor," he said. "The floor's been there a long time. We have sanded it beyond the number of sandings that a wood floor can sustain. If you think of a tongue-and-groove system, you essentially sand out the top layer of that groove and eventually that wants to crack out and you start to lose the strength of the floor. So replacement proved necessary."

Browne said the district considered options but decided on installing a new hardwood floor.

"We've worked for a while now to identify the right product to put back in there, and we decided on putting back in a hardwood floor," he said.

Browne said he anticipates the project will start on May 14 with completion by Aug. 1.

"It's a good time of the year to mobilize a little bit before other schools look to mobilize," he said. "We can have the kids go outside for gym classes and such, and we really don't need it for any sports functions at that particular time. Our plan is that the floor will be 100 percent ready by Aug. 1 for use again."

Browne confirmed that the district is planning to save portions of the original floor for future fundraising or other purposes.

"Part of what we are looking to do is to save portions of that (original) floor for that memorabilia type of idea," he said. "Some of it we may use for auction purposes down the road; those have not yet been necessarily identified. And we had some fun ideas, like could we create some shuffleboards out of it. We'll definitely be looking at that. What we've committed to is we'll do that before the contractor gets in there to do any type of mass mobilization."

Browne said the gym is mostly used for physical education classes and some sports events such as freshman basketball.

The High School Academy building was used as the district's high school until the current high school at 797 Game Farm Road was completed in 1998. The building reopened as the district's middle school and then in 2008 as the academy, housing the district's high school freshman students.