It's official, town saves aging gym

Damn! The streak broke! It's okay, I get it back tomorrow...

By Janice Kurbjun
Times staff writer

The Elk Mountain community managed to save their school’s gymnasium.

When the School Facilities Commission recommended funding for a new elementary school in the town, the initial plan was to level the old building and erect a new on it its place.

That plan would have destroyed the school’s gym, the largest single-room structure in town. It has watched over the community for a half century.

“It’s a neat old gym,” said Carbon County School District 2 Superintendent Bob Gates. “It’s the heart and soul of the community.”

Not a huge gym, it still outsizes the small church in Elk Mountain, said Elk Mountain Elementary principal Dale Kari. With a small seating area and a tile floor, it has an aged look. However, it is well-built. The small stage area allows it to serve as a multipurpose room for both the school and the community. Children at the school frequent it for physical education, indoor recess and to eat lunch.

Community members gathered when they heard the long-standing gym was to disappear from town. “(The SFC) said there was too much space at the school and (the School Board) needed to do something different,” said Town Clerk Judy Christopherson. “The town all went in and fought a battle and that’s where it came up that (the SFC) would give us a window to come up with a different plan.”

The window allowed the town two years to come up with a solution, Gates said. They are now at the tail end of that window and are almost ready to go. The solution is to replace most of the building but leave the gym standing. Kari said that the final school design review will be done in early March.

Until the fire department got its own fire hall, it held its annual chili cookoff and caroling party in the gym, Christopherson said. It also housed weddings and funerals, school programs, Boy Scouts award ceremonies, and, of course, basketball games.

Jim Jones, 75, graduated from the older brick part of the Elk Mountain school in a class of two. He was there before the gym was built, but he watched his children and grandchildren perform in school plays there. “There’s a lot of things I remember. I’ve seen a lot of things go by there,” he said.

The new school should be 12,000 square feet, reducing the current space by 5,000 square feet. It is meant to hold 18 to 21 students, Gates said. Officials hope that construction will begin in early summer this year and finish in time for the students’ arrival in August.

The SFC recommended a pre-engineered building for the new elementary school. Williams Scotsman, Inc., a company headquartered in Baltimore, Md., should fabricate the six pieces prior to shipping them to Elk Mountain, said Gates.