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Warren Township board delays approval of O'Plaine locker-room plan over supervision and cost concerns
Summary
Trustees heard conceptual drawings from DLA Architects showing two locker-room options for the O'Plaine Campus — a smaller, cheaper plan and a larger $16 million option with more collaborative adult spaces. Board members cited supervision, pool access and square-footage tradeoffs and asked staff to return with refined pricing and alternatives.
Warren Township High School Board members on the committee of the whole reviewed two conceptual designs for a locker-room renovation at the district's O'Plaine Campus and declined to approve a full, higher-cost option without additional design and pricing work.
DLA Architects' Carrie Matlock told the board Option 2 — a more collaborative layout with a larger training room — is approximately $16,000,000 and that a roughly 5,000-square-foot difference between the plans “adds up to a couple million dollars.” Matlock emphasized the drawings were conceptual and said further schematic design and pricing would follow if the board directed staff to proceed.
Board members raised repeated concerns about student supervision and sight lines in the larger option. One trustee summarized prior feedback from students and PE staff, saying the existing layout “blocks the line of sight” and that there had been incidents that adults could not see. Several members said Option 1, the smaller layout, offered clearer sight lines and fewer corners where misbehavior could occur.
Trustees also discussed how the change would affect students traveling to the pool. The board asked staff to evaluate whether the current athletic-trainer space could be retrofitted to provide a boys’ swim locker room and whether the design could avoid sending students through unconditioned hallways in swimsuits.
Rather than selecting the costlier Option 2, trustees asked administration to have DLA return with more precise square-footage pricing, to model what would be lost if the district trimmed the larger option, and to scope out the cost of converting the athletic trainer room for swim use. The administration agreed to return with those numbers and additional drawings.
The board made no formal commitment to construction funding at the meeting; members framed the current presentation as a request for further study before any vote to appropriate capital money.
