The Bowling Green Independent School District Board of Education approved a financing plan for final phase four renovations at Bowling Green High School, which will include demolishing the current school. The project is slated for completion by July 2023, according to the district.

“We’re excited,” said city schools Superintendent Gary Fields, calling the school board’s action “the first step in the final phase of Bowling Green High School” renovations.

Initially, the district expected the project could take several phases spread out over as long as 12 years, Fields said, but he said the “stars have aligned for us to do it sooner.” The renovation project first broke ground in May 2018.

The project application approved by the school board Monday represents an early cost estimate for the phase four renovations, and it totals $18.2 million, Fields said.

Much of the phase renovations will focus on creating the front face of the new BGHS, Fields said. It will add new administrative offices, a commons area with a social staircase, library, an art classroom that opens to a courtyard, a technology classroom with a Chromebook repair shop and other spaces, he said.

During the current phase of the project, walls are going up for the high school’s new auxiliary gymnasium, which will also double as a storm shelter, Fields said.

Progress is also continuing on the school’s new natatorium, with the swimming pool now installed.

“We’re quickly approaching the closing of the Bowling Green High School swimming pool,” he said. “That’ll occur March 15. They will begin taking that structure down and begin building the performing arts center and some classroom space there.”

Work also continues on an athletic field where the high school’s football stadium previously stood, Fields said.

“All that’s on schedule to be complete in July, this summer,” Fields said. “Of the four phases, that’ll be the one that’s been very fast.”