March 29, 2024

Under construction

New 1,200-seat stadium underway at Colfax-Mingo

Construction is underway for the $12 million construction project at Colfax-Mingo Community School District. A multi-phase project, improvements are planned for the stadium and school.

“Right now the first phase of that master plan is addressing what was identified as the highest priority within our district which was our extracurricular areas and psychical fitness type areas,” Colfax-Mingo Superintendent Erik Anderson said.

Currently underway is work to complete a new 1,200-seat stadium for football, soccer and track. The stadium is located east of the current stadium on the school’s property and is expected to be complete by fall of 2021

The second phase includes a new 1,000-seat gym, a new 3-mat wrestling room and a new weight and fitness room. It is expected to be ready for use in the fall of 2022.

Bringing in the community into the project is also important to the district and with that the “Pave the Path” opportunity was created. A fundraiser, individuals bricks and pillars can be purchased and personalized to help fund the exciting addition to the district.

“From the beginning, we were trying to figure out ways to commemorate aspects of our communities within our new stadium,” Anderson said. “Part of it was, outside of the Mingo building where the football stadium was, there were a couple of brick pillars. We were trying to figure out how to integrate those, potentially, into our stadium. That kind of rolled into a brick project where we are selling bricks and have them engraved.”

The idea developed to about 700 bricks and additional pillars that could be purchased and personalized in a new plaza outside of the stadium. Not originally a part of the stadium project, the plaza was added after seeing similar areas at other school.

“A couple of the schools we visited on our benchmarking tours, they had maybe three to five foot pillars then they had a plaque or were engraved if somebody wanted to purchase that,” Anderson said. “We have already received enough interest that we will be adding the plaza and pillars. It has just kind of come together in that way.”

Brick are set at $100 and can be personalized with up to two lines of ext and 14 characters per line. Pillars are available at $2,000 each with up to four lines of text at 14 characters per line.

“(We) understand that this is a really difficult time to be asking people for money,” Anderson said. “Understanding that, there is obviously no pressure because the bricks, we will fill them in with all of the bricks instead of having them engraved and they can buy them at a later time, it doesn’t have to be right now.”

As the weather continues to improve, noticeable progress will be seen on the project. While it can be hard to see when at the school, once complete it will be a destination for the community.

“It is moving,” Anderson said. “It is hard to see when you drive up to the school, you have to drive around back and there is still a great big, we call it our dirt mountain, as well, blocking to be able to see what is happening. If you drive on old Hwy 6 on the south side of the school, you can see the retaining walls, it looks really neat.”