Construction crews make progress on installing the roof while working together on building the new Caldera High School late last month.

What was once vacant, dusty land at the corner of Knott Road and SE 15th Street is now occupied by the towering skeleton of a 260,000-square-foot school and its accompanying athletic fields.

After about a year of construction, Caldera High — the big-ticket item of Bend-La Pine Schools’ $268 million bond from 2017 — is taking shape.

Caldera High isn’t the only Bend-La Pine construction project this summer. The school district is still using its 2017 bond dollars on seven major projects this summer, from new gyms to the beginning of a complete overhaul of Bend High School.

Caldera High School

As expected with a halfway-finished, $114 million project, some parts of Caldera High School are more complete than others.

The building’s north end is closest to being ready for students. A two-story weight and fitness room for student-athletes just needs exercise equipment and dumbbells.

Just north of the school are multiple sports fields and courts. One of them is nearly complete — the artificial turf field, where the Caldera Wolfpack football, soccer and lacrosse teams will don orange and navy uniforms. The turf has been installed, and the main grandstand is finished. The main tasks left are adding a rubber coating to the track, finishing the visitors’ seating and installing a scoreboard, said Mike Condon, project manager for the school district.

Portions of Caldera High’s center, such as the two gyms, the auditorium and the long, wide main corridor, aren’t complete yet. But many tall brick walls have been erected, and the gyms’ roof is installed.

The building’s south side — which will contain the library, classrooms and collaborative working spaces — is the least finished, with some partly-finished brick walls and foundation.

Outside Caldera High, workers are building a roundabout at the intersection of Knott and 15th Street and adding a multiuse path connecting the high school to the new Alpenglow Park to its north, Condon said.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has slowed or stopped many aspects of daily life, hasn’t heavily impacted work on Caldera High, Condon said.

“It’s hard to assess just yet, but at this point, we’re feeling pretty good about things,” he said. “But it’s not over, so we’ll see how things progress.”

Construction crews are expected to finish work on Caldera High — which will hold 1,600 students — by the summer of 2021.

New gyms

Construction on two new gyms began at the east Bend schools of Juniper Elementary School and High Desert Middle School this year.

The nearly $6 million gym at Juniper started to take shape this spring, after COVID-19 closed school buildings, said district spokesperson Alandra Johnson. For now, it’s just a concrete foundation and some early framing.

The gym will host classes starting in early 2021, Johnson said.

Juniper Elementary, built in 1965, has one shared gym and cafeteria space. The new gym will allow the school to alleviate crowding and offer more physical education classes and lunch periods, Johnson said.

Bear Creek and R.E. Jewell elementary schools — other older buildings in east Bend — will receive stand-alone cafeterias in the next wave of bond construction for the same reason, according to Bend-La Pine’s website.

High Desert Middle School already has one separate gym, but it is one of only two middle schools in the district that doesn’t have a second, auxiliary gym, Johnson said.

When this $5.2 million gym is finished, likely by fall 2021, High Desert will be able to hold two P.E. classes at once, or have multiple sports teams practicing at the same time, she said.

New building at Bend High

The first step of Bend-La Pine’s planned overhaul for the aging, sprawling Bend High School campus has begun with a new, stand-alone classroom building.

School closures in March allowed construction crews to get a head start on demolishing the old building, said school district project manager Gina Franzosa.

The 57-year-old former classroom building, which was attached to the main Bend High School building, is gone, and a patch of dirt sits in its place. A concrete foundation will likely be poured later this summer, Franzosa said. But the first priority is rebuilding the walls of the existing Bend High building so class can resume in the fall. The entire project will cost about $6.8 million, she said.

The new, separate building in Bend High will be two stories and should welcome students in the fall of 2021. District leaders eventually plan to tear down the rest of the school and create a college-style campus with a few separate buildings and outdoor pathways.

The rest of the Bend High overhaul will have to wait until Bend-La Pine passes a new bond, she said.