As many saw when approaching the high school, when the auditorium walls first went up, there was a section of brick that remained a different red than the rest of the bricks surrounding it. The reasoning behind this wasn’t a cosmetic choice, but rather a skipped step in the process of putting the wall up.
These bricks are a type of brick called ‘thin bricks’, which are just the faces of bricks laid down into a form, with mortar poured on top of them to give the appearance and structure of bricks laid by hand. When the bricks are first laid down, they’re given a wax coating to prevent the mortar from sticking in places it shouldn’t be sticking to.
Once the panels finish, and are hardened, they’re taken outside and used in construction. Normally, after they get the bricks outside, they’re sprayed with a hot water and acid solution that dissolves the wax coating and gives the brick the color we’re all familiar with.
“It appears as though there’s been a couple of the panels that didn’t get sprayed very well, and the most obvious one was the panel right out front, that everybody saw coming in that was so blatantly different,” Principal Kevin Rohlfs said.
Rohlfs’ role in the construction of the auditorium is a simple one.
“Well, you don’t have me touching any tools or anything like that, but we meet regularly,” Rohlfs said. “There’s just a lot of conversation, logistical conversations between the construction and us in the building, and then me communicating out with everybody.”
As of Feb. 7, there are no major concerns that would set construction back any further than the predicted date. The most recent minor concern was an uncapped pipe as a result of poor construction documentation during initial construction in 1977, which required the water to be shut off at 3:10 p.m. on Feb. 7 for 10 minutes.
“They every so often find another surprise,” Rohlfs said. “Now that we’ve got the outer structure done, everything else now is new going in. So there should be less and less of those surprises as we move forward, but it’s like ‘big surprise,’ and now it’s just kind of like trickling down tiny surprises.”
As of Feb. 3, they have started the demolition of the offices. Rohlfs said he “believes” that the auditorium will be done in October, with the staff being in their new offices by July, as that is the construction crew’s finish date as well.
“People scoff at me because no project ever finishes on time, but I believe that they’re going to be done in October,” Rohlfs said.
