This artist’s rendering depicts the two-story building slated for construction at Camp George in Daegu, South Korea. The building will provide classroom space for Taegu American School and house new quarters for the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program. (Courtesy of U.S. Army)
PYEONGTAEK, South Korea — More classroom space, a bigger gymnasium and new quarters for the junior ROTC program are on the way for Taegu American School at Camp George in Daegu, South Korea.
Preliminary work has begun on the $6.4 million project, which is to be finished by August 2007, Army officials in Daegu said Tuesday.
Officials held a ground-breaking ceremony at Camp George on Tuesday morning to formally kick off the project.
Plans call for building a two-story building on the school’s former athletic field, said Kevin Jackson, chief spokesman for the Army’s Area IV Support Activity at Camp Henry in Daegu.
The school, which opened in 1983, was designed for up to 600 students. But with a gradual increase in military families in the area, enrollment is somewhat above 700, Jackson said.
“In the past, we’ve attempted to address that overcrowding by adding a series of portable classrooms, which have helped,” Jackson said. “But now we’re constructing a separate building on the sports field and expanding the gymnasium.”
The new building will measure 26,200 square feet.
It will house classrooms, computer rooms, music classrooms and music practice rooms.
“Now we’ll have additional classrooms and it will enable them to … be more comfortable than they may have been in the past year or two,” Jackson said.
One section of the building will be devoted to the school’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program. Offices for JROTC faculty and cadet cadre, an armory housing drill weapons and related items and a simulated firing range are among the planned features, Jackson said.
“The facility that they were currently operating out of is a little bit old and run-down, and certainly this will boost the morale of our young people in the community who are participating in the JROTC program,” he said.
The existing gym will be expanded by 2,900 square feet. That space will house a weight-training room, multipurpose room and storage room.
The Yul Lim Construction Co. Ltd. in Seoul is building the structures under contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
