‘Cleaner and refreshed’: Lockport High School Central campus ready for new year after summer makeover

Lockport Township High School’s Central campus underwent the first half of a two-year renovation plan this summer to address issues with the aging building.

As students prepare to return to class on Monday, Lockport Township High School District 205 Superintendent Robert McBride reviewed the changes the school has undergone in the last three months with The Herald-News.

“The exterior of the building looks cleaner and refreshed, but this isn’t a big visual glow-up,” McBride said.

He said that although many aesthetic improvements were made inside the building during its almost yearlong closure in 2023-2024, this work was more about improving the “structural integrity” of the 115-year-old building.

Since June, the roof on the west half of the building, including the areas above most of the classrooms spaces, has been replaced. The east side of the building, including the two gyms and the auditorium, is slated to be reroofed next summer.

“We’re wrapping the work up on that half of the roof now,” McBride said Aug. 7. “It was a full rebuild. If we were talking about it in terms of a house, it would be considered a tear-off with rafters and decking replaced. We’ve been doing repairs on it for 30 years, and it was just well past its lifespan.”

The more visible portion of the project involved masonry work. That was done throughout the building’s interior and on the north side of the exterior with new tuck-pointing, he said.

In addition, crews reconstructed deteriorated mortars and parapets on the top of the building, and replaced 102 window lintels.

“The north wall was prioritized on the exterior because that’s the part from 1928, and it’s the area we’ve had the most trouble with,” McBride said. “That’s the part of the building where the ceiling collapsed, and where all that reconstruction work in the classrooms was needed.”

Unexpected repairs

McBride said the district did not originally plan to do as much work on the northern wall this year as they ended up approving, but “it was one of those projects that you don’t know how big it is until you open it up.”

A portion of the wall facing Jefferson Street needed to be rebuilt more significantly than originally expected, with all the mortar needing to be replaced. The issue was discovered late in the project and has slightly delayed completion of the summer work.

“We discovered this problem two weeks ago, and we decided to move it up and do the work now,” McBride said.

As a result, three classrooms and the main office will not be ready for use on the first day of school because those rooms are directly in or under the work area.

McBride said those spaces likely will remain closed for the first three weeks of the school year, and the classes meant to take place in those affected rooms will be temporarily relocated to other empty classrooms or communal spaces, such as the library or cafeteria.

Project costs

“Even with that extra work we are still under budget for this project,” McBride said. “Originally, we estimated in January that this work would cost $8.1 million, and we came in at $6.7 million, and we’re approving $528,000 in contingency funding for that last wall replacement.”

Overall, the two-year project was estimated to cost about $15 million.

In addition to the remaining masonry and roofing work, the 2026 summer project will see major improvements made to the school’s electrical system, which got a small head start this year.

Over the summer, new switch boxes were installed into the school’s electrical system.

McBride said this small change is going to act as a test of the new equipment so the district knows “how to replace the rest next year.”

“We need to see if this will work in such an old building before we start replacing all our wiring,” he said. “By doing this, we can see if the new equipment will work with our existing conduit or if we need to change our plans.”

Although the vast majority of District 205’s summer construction work was slated for Central this year, one significant project was completed at the East campus over the break.

According to board documents, the building’s sole elevator was completely reconstructed in place during June and July and will now be equipped with a new video monitoring system and modernized controls “to enhance safety and reliability.”