DANVILLE — Riding around Danville these days looks a little different than it did in February, mainly because the old, unused intermediate school building is now a parking lot.
Jason Snively, Superintendent of Danville Local Schools, said the new 64-spot and 4-ADA spot parking lot hosted its first cars just a few weeks ago.
Snively added that crews have finished constructing the parking lot, except for installing the lights, which are coming in mid-December.
“It opens up the space for us to have an adjacent parking area, which we never really had before,” Snively said. “We always just had off-street parking for the junior high school, and the church and their community center allowed us to park over there until now.”
While Snively and his staff already appreciate the better visibility for safety purposes, the superintendent noted the plan for next fall is to have the spots numbered and assigned for additional safety precautions.
“The other advantage of the parking lot is it adds significant parking spots for easier access to events in the gymnasium, so that’s a big benefit for the evening,” Snively said.
A flashback in time
Even though the school district demolished the old intermediate building, it didn’t demolish some pieces of the building’s history and its memories.
“The sign we have in the parking lot is actually part of a facade from the intermediate building that was demolished. We saved the limestone archway facade and implemented that into the new sign,” Snively said.
The sign also contains the cornerstone from the intermediate building. Inside the cornerstone is a time capsule from when the district built the building.
“We opened the time capsule up around February last year, when the building was demolished, and within that time capsule, there were yearbooks and some newspapers,” Snively said.
“We put those items back in the time capsule and added a yearbook and some other news from 2025, resealed it and implemented that into the sign.”
Junior high school building updates
Snively recapped by saying the primary purpose of the seventh-grade through 12th-grade building addition was to add an elevator for ADA accessibility and a safety vestibule for a more secure entry into the building.
Before the elevator, students used a chair lift that Snively said was embarrassing for students and would shut down the stairwell when used.
“Not that we have a lot of students with long-term disabilities, physical disabilities, but we often have students on crutches and sprained ankles and things like that from sports and other activities,” Snively said.
“So, this [elevator] will eliminate the need to use the chair lift that took four and a half minutes to get from the bottom to the top, and no one wanted to use it.”
The building is also getting some office and classroom upgrades.
“The principal, secretary, dean of students and athletic director will all be moving down into the new area on the first floor,” Snively said. “Then on the second floor, we’ve added a couple more classrooms and a conference room.”
Students and staff will use one of the new classrooms as the designated robotics lab and the other for special education services.
Snively said all the new projects inside the building will be open to students and staff after Christmas break, and the existing office spaces will see some new uses, too.
“We’re going to utilize those spaces for some special services such as counselors, OT and PT services if they need to work with students, conference rooms or just small group rooms,” Snively said.
The existing office spaces aren’t getting any renovations, just some new furniture, Snively said.
Below are a few more photos from Snively that show some of the new additions inside the junior high school building.
