South Fork High School Sports Complex, Chiller Plant, Practice Fields, and Site Drainage

The Martin County School District selected WGI and the rest of the Song + Associates Team to design a new 50,000-square-foot athletic facility for the campus, to replace an older chiller plant facility, and to correct drainage issues with the existing baseball and softball areas. The keystone of the nearly 27 million dollar project is certainly the athletic facility, which will house a new weight room, wrestling room, and study center. The project greatly increases security for the campus’ extracurricular activities by maintaining a separate access point for visitors to congregate away from an active student population, which couldn’t be accommodated with a gymnasium in the center of the classroom space.

The design of the projects encountered several challenges in development and permitting. The site location and orientation impacted a restricted area, which requires wetland mitigation to be undertaken. In lieu of identifying off-site areas for this to occur, the team enhanced and expanded an existing wetland area south of the stadium. While working with the South Florida Water Management District on those improvements, WGI separated and accelerated the other two portions of the project in the chiller plant and ballfields. This allowed those two elements to be constructed and opened to student use before baseball and softball season in the spring, and the 2023-2024 school year for the chiller plant in a sweltering summer.