COEUR d’ALENE — The long-awaited renovation of Lakes Middle School is making progress and scheduled to be nearly complete for the first day of the 2019-2020 school year in September.

The 65-year-old school, at 930 N. 15th St., is improving and expanding to include a second gym, a new band room, modern media center, new choir room, shop classroom, courtyard, kitchen equipment and bathrooms as well as upgrades to existing areas.

"It's an exciting time," Lakes Principal Jeff Bengston said Tuesday morning during a tour of the construction.

Crews of up to 60 workers have been putting in long days and even weekends since late April to meet completion deadlines. The project budget is $5.7 million. It’s being financed with a bond measure voters approved in March 2017.

"This is the girls locker room," Coeur d'Alene School District maintenance and operations director Bryan Martin said. The walls showed layers of aging blue, pink and yellow paint.

The floor had been ripped out, exposing earth that hadn’t seen the light of day in six decades. The pipes that were removed had been installed when Eisenhower was president.

"It is completely gutted, as you see — completely re-piped, completely rewired," Martin said. "Everything in it (will be) brand new. Lockers, everything. They tore out probably a third of the floor."

Lakes last got construction attention in 2009, when three 600-square-foot classrooms were modernized into two 900-square-foot classrooms.

The principal said the history of construction on Lakes has been tough.

"It’s long been needed down here," Bengston said. "Several times we’ve had plans to do this and then it got pushed back."

Martin, a 25-year district employee who plans to retire later this year but could have retired in June, said he wanted to see the Lakes project finished before he hung up his hard hat.

"This is quite a school, really,” he said. “It has gone through a lot. When I started here in ’94, there were 1,100 kids going to this school. When the bell rang, you would plaster yourself up against the wall because it was like running the bulls in Spain. It was a little bit crowded."

"You’d be amazed at how many people have gone to this school," Martin said. "The history of it, since ’54, it’s been a high school, middle school, and just a lot of people have gone through this school and it’s still standing. It’s actually a very, very good structure."

For the upcoming school year, Lakes will have about 750 students who will have more than 18,300 square feet of additional space. The expansion bumps the school up to nearly 94,000 square feet from about 75,000, an increase of nearly 25 percent.

The courtyard, which had previously gone unused, now has two walkways students can use to alleviate traffic in the inside hallways while getting some fresh air between classes.

The second gym will allow more access for sports and physical education as well as community events that can take place after hours while the rest of the school remains locked.

"You could have two P.E. classes simultaneously or split a class so half goes here and does one activity and half goes into the other gym,” said Coeur d'Alene School District spokesman Scott Maben.

The front will have a whole new look, be more accessible to the disabled and be more secure. The horseshoe shape will be filled in with a stretch of hallway connecting the north and south entrances that face 15th Street, and the office of Lakes' school resource officer will be near the media center and administration offices.

“Security is a main player in this whole thing,” Martin said. “The building will be secured at the level it needs to be.”

A practice sprint track is being installed on the field and new basketball hoops will be ready for action come fall.

"Lakes is a huge basketball place," Martin said. "Of all the schools, they play more ball here before, during and after school than anybody."

Doors will be open for the first day of school, but the new gym and band room will need a bit more work through November, so students can expect some construction to continue for a few more months.

But it’s an overhaul that is “long overdue,” Martin said, and when it’s done, Lakes will be good for a long time.

"It’s just time,” Martin said. "I have to take my hat off to the board of trustees ... They had the opportunity because of money that we had from other projects, that they decided to take all of our alternates and get this site done. There’s nothing that was left out on the original plan; we had alternates in case the cost went too high, and they accepted all of them when we opened this project up.

"I’m just so happy that the board did that."