SUN CITY – A long-range solution to the issue of student parking on Sun City streets will be a reality later this month.
An additional 192-space parking lot on the north, or front side, of the newly expanded Huntley High School campus will be opened by the end of September, a Huntley Community School District 158 spokesperson said last week.
The new parking lot on North side of the high school is expected to be completed at the end of this month. The 192 additional spaces will accommodate all HHS student drivers, says a school official. (Photo by Chris LaPelusa/Sun Day)
“This will take care of the waiting list of students that existed last school year,” said Dan Armstrong, director of communications. “It will provide enough spaces for all of the students who drive cars to school. We believe our shortage of spaces, even with our recent campus expansion, was one of the reasons some students parked on Sun City streets near the campus during the last school year.”
This new lot is now under construction immediately north of the present student parking lot, Armstong added.“This construction has required us to shut down the new entrance-exit drive off Harmony Road that was opened in 2014. That will be re-opened when the 192-space lot is completed.”
District officials said they would consider building additional parking facilities after Sun City residents in Neighborhoods 28 and 38 complained that students were parking cars near their homes on school days and cutting through their yards to get to and from the campus.
Construction on the $39 million addition to the high school building and adjacent parking lots was completed this past spring. The final phase was a science classroom addition on the west side of the building. This project included upgrades to all of the athletic fields and stadium, a new activities entrance, a new main entrance, a second entrance/exit drive to the campus off Harmony Road, a 55,000-square-foot field house, a state-of-the-art learning resource center called The Hub, a renovated and enlarged cafeteria, and enlarged parking areas for visitors, staff, and students.
“The entire project was begun in 2013 and came in slightly under budget and ahead of schedule,” the district said in a recent edition of its periodic newsletter. “We also improved traffic inside of the building by creating a new, wider hallway connecting the front and back of the building,” said Armstrong last week. “In addition to the 192-space lot near the front entrance, we now have a gravel lot on the west wide of the building that was used by construction crews and activities. We now are offering it for student parking.”
When Sun City opened in 1999, there were only a few hundred students in the high school. Now, there are about 2,700, and the number is expected to increase to 3,000 in the next few years.
