Stayton had modest plans when it focused on building a new fitness center last year.

“We were just going to do a pole barn, some place where the kids could go work out,” athletic director Darren Shryock said.

But the deeper the school got into the project, the bigger it thought.

“We thought we could do it for about $400,000, but people just kept being so generous, so we were able to do more and more,” Shryock said. “It's the Taj Mahal now. It's considerably more than what we anticipated.”

A year after breaking ground, workers are putting final touches on the $1.6 million, 6,000-square foot building. The Ty Hart Memorial Fitness Center – named after the former Stayton three-sport athlete who died in a helicopter crash while serving with the U.S. Marines in 2016 – is slated for a ribbon-cutting ceremony Sept. 6.

Built without district funds, it is the product of a community-wide effort. The Hart Foundation, run by the Hart family, provided a large stake. The rest came from Stayton's booster club and local businesses, including Emery & Sons Construction.

“One of the neatest things for me to see was the teamwork between the community and the school district, and parents and everybody, to get this done,” said Stayton football coach Randy Nyquist, who teaches weight training at the school. “I think there's an investment from everybody. We had some people in the community that really, really stepped up.”

Beyond the project, the Hart family has been very supportive of Stayton athletics for years.

“If our kids need new shoes or a tennis racket, anything like that, the Hart Foundation takes care of that,” Shryock said. “They've been very generous.”

Nyquist, who helped build fitness centers in previous coaching stints at West Albany and Oregon City, raved over the new building.

“It's going to be as good as any facility that I've ever coached at,” he said.

Nyquist identified a fitness center as a dire need when he took over as Stayton's coach in 2017. He took administrators on a trip to show them Woodburn's weight training facility.

“In this day and age, if you want to be competitive, you've got to provide an opportunity with competitive facilities,” Nyquist.

The school has made many improvements for athletics in recent years – including batting facilities for baseball and softball and artificial turf for the softball field – but creating a more viable area for fitness training had yet to be addressed. Stayton athletes conducted weight training in a small room in the upstairs auxiliary gym.

“If I could get 25 kids in there, it was packed,” Nyquist said. “This one, I can double or triple the number of people in the facility.”

The fitness center has areas for strength training and plyometrics and has an artificial turf strip down the middle for speed and agility development. The area between the fitness center and the track also will have artificial turf.

The air-conditioned facility will have big-screen TVs that will allow coaches to review video with their athletes. Storefront garage-door windows look out over the football field.

“It's kind of a motivating thing if you're a student-athlete, to look at the track or the field, and see, 'Hey, that's where I'm going to compete, and that's why I'm doing it,'” Nyquist said.

The facility has created a buzz at the school. Heading into the new school year, enrollment is trending up for weight training and advanced fitness courses.

“It definitely upgraded our school,” Nyquist said. “It'll be something that will help our kids and our school and our athletic programs.”