What began as an ambitious and massive construction project five years ago at Tomball Independent School District is entering its final phases as construction on the remaining three buildings planned are either nearing completion or fully underway.

The district’s second high school, Tomball Memorial, a second elementary school located in The Woodlands that has yet to be named and a new central administration building are the remaining three projects allocated in a $198 million bond project approved by district voters in 2007.

If all goes according to schedule, all three should be completed and open by next fall.

According to district spokesperson Staci Stanfield, each of the three facilities is on track to be finished by its targeted completion date with Tomball Memorial the first to open its doors to students in August.

Tomball Memorial, located on Northpointe Ridge Road in the southern portion of the district, was constructed at a cost of $59.2 million. According to Stanfield, the school’s staff has already moved into the building in order to prepare for the 2011-12 school year and furniture is being delivered.

All that’s left to complete are “punch list” items, Stanfield said.

The 36,000-square-foot facility will accommodate up to 2,500 students with a “core capacity” of 3,000. The campus will also feature a junior varsity football field, varsity fields for baseball, softball and soccer and a competition basketball/volleyball court.

Tomball residents passing through downtown these days have most likely noticed cranes and steel beams punching above the tree lines south of Main Street. The beams are part of one of the more unique projects of the bond plan, a new central administration (pictured above) building on Cherry Street.

Being constructed on the same site as the district’s first school in 1936, the administration building’s design will replicate that of the original building. The 40,000-square-foot facility will house the superintendent’s office, administrative services department, tax office, mail room, the district’s curriculum and instruction department, the finance department and board room.

With a $6 million price tag, the new administration building is on schedule to open in the spring of 2012.

Stanfield explained that currently the structural steel work is “nearing completion,” with remaining concrete to be poured and completed soon. Following that, construction will being on the building’s roof.

Following the path created by Creekside Forest Elementary in The Woodlands, Tomball ISD’s new K-6 school is scheduled to open in the fall of 2012.

Located on Creekside Green Drive, the new elementary school will have a similar design as Creekside Forest, the district’s first K-6 campus that opened in 2009.

The district has allocated $12.9 million for construction costs for the new K-6 school.

The three latest buildings bring the total number of new facilities constructed through Bond 2007 to eight. Tomball ISD has already opened Creekside Forest, Canyon Pointe Elementary, a new Ancillary Services building, a technology and staff development center and an agriculture project barn at the site of Tomball Memorial High School.

The bond also funded additions and renovations at Tomball Intermediate School and renovations at Tomball High School.

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