Beam, necessary to finish roof repairs, delayed by month
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – Gilroy High School’s physical education classes will be held outdoors and athletes will practice in the auxiliary gym while the main gym awaits roof repairs.
Shipment of a new roof beam is being delayed by nearly a month, according to estimates by Charlie Van Meter, director of facilities and maintenance operations for GUSD. Van Meter expects the beam to arrive the first week of September to replace a beam scorched by a fire in June. Once the new beam is installed, other repairs to the inside of the gym will take three to four weeks to complete.
Work cannot be started until the beam is in place. Meanwhile, the gym is unsafe for students to use. Scaffolding is currently holding the old beam in place, sections of the roof were removed in preparation to remove it, and fire sprinkler damage to the floor cannot be fixed until the scaffolding equipment is removed.
“It’s frustrating because it’s out of your hands and you’re just waiting,” said Greg Camacho-Light, assistant principal of GHS in charge of facilities. “It will mostly be felt by the coaches and the students who would use it.”
Physical education classes normally meet in the gym for roll call and then separate to participate in various outdoor activities like swimming or football when weather permits. As many as four PE classes with 45 students each hold class at a time. There may be too many students needing to use the smaller gym if repairs extend into the month of October as the weather gets cooler, Camacho-Light said. About 20 percent of GHS students will be affected each day, he said.
The locker rooms will remain open, but the gym-side entrance to the locker room will be closed.
Van Meter was confident the project would not last too long into the school year, provided the beam arrives within the next three weeks.
“We’ll be open for basketball,” he said. “We won’t have a problem.”
Girls’ volleyball is the only team needing the gym for practices and games until the start of the boys’ basketball season. The varsity, junior varsity and freshman teams would be unable to fit in the auxiliary gym at the same time, but they usually hold practices at different times.
“We’ll be able to work it out,” Camacho-Light said. “I don’t anticipate we’ll have problems.”
The beam – 96 feet long and 42 inches thick – had to be specially made for the GHS gym. It contains more than 5,800 “board feet” and weighs 12,000 pounds. A “board foot” is 1 foot long, 1 foot wide and 1 inch thick.
GHS will rent a crane to put the beam into place once it is delivered. The crane will first take out the older, damaged beam. Scaffolding is supporting the old beam, which is still attached to the gym walls but has been detached from the roof.
Once the new beam is in place, crews will replace the parts of the roof that were taken off, install acoustic ceiling tiles and lighting and repair the damaged areas of the floor.
The gym fire repairs are estimated at $300,000 and will be covered by insurance, Van Meter said.
