The portables by the gym are scheduled to be moved once the construction on the football track and field start. – Haelin ChoAfter unanimously passing the budget plan for improvements to Palo Alto High School’s track and field earlier this month, the Facilities Steering Committee is ready to present its plan to the Palo Alto Unified School District Board of Education for final approval.

The upgrades will include a new concession stand, a resurfaced track and new bleachers.

Representatives from Deems Lewis McKinley, the construction company working on the project, also hopes to implement alternates — smaller projects that aren’t part of the total cost but are planned — including fencing, a scoreboard, and a trellis structure if the budget allows. They also hope to add permeable material, which allows water and air to move, to 50 percent of the pavement.

According to Assistant Principal Kathie Laurence, who joined the project at the beginning of the 2010 school year, there are many problems the committee would like to address. Primary concerns are bathroom conditions, the concessions stand and bleachers.

The bathrooms and snack bar will be rebuilt and new bleachers will replace the old ones on both the home side and the visitor side, according to Laurence. The plan also includes a picnic area and a new storage shed.

The project also involves relocating the portables in the summer. The other portables on the quad will be removed once the math and social studies building is constructed.

“One of the portables is going to move to the other side of the parking lot where there are some Conex boxes,” Chris Ramm, a project architect with Deems Lewis McKinley, said during the meeting. “The other three are going to go away to another site or just be demolished.”

According to Laurence, improving the football field and track will give a place for the entire school to congregate.

“The student body is growing and it would be nice to have seating for the student body to go watch the football game,” Laurence said, “Or the track meet, or whatever else might be held — a soccer game. That field is used a lot. It’s a stadium project, not a football project.”

Laurence also is excited about the new style of the stadium.

“Then there’s the architecture piece, and it is going to be beautiful,” Laurence said.

The total cost of the plan is estimated at $3.5 to $3.6 million, and the alternates cost around $223,050 extra, the Deems Lewis McKinley group said during the presentation.

After presenting its plan to the Board of Education on Tuesday, March 8, the Facilities Steering Committee plans to focus more on the specific costs of each improvement. The committee hopes to finish all improvements by August 2012.

According to Laurence, the new stadium will be a huge improvement in quality, but not a drastic change to the stadium’s infrastructure.

“It [the stadium] would just be the same thing we have now,” Laurence said. “It would just be nicer.”