With the dedication of the renovated Hamilton High School, Hamilton City Schools has officially called to a close its journey to revitalize and modernize the district and its buildings.

“This is a day we’ve all looked forward to,” said Principal Doug Leist at Thursday night’s ceremonial cutting of the ribbon.

“Look around, and you’ll see a dream come true,” said Superintendent Janet Baker. “A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity draws to a close tonight.”

The journey began 16 years ago, Baker said, when she took a trip to visiting one of the new high school buildings in the Lakota district.

“I was secretly envious,” she said. “Don’t Hamilton students deserve to attend school in new and amazing facilities?

“Back then, it didn’t seem to be in the cards.”

So she said she began to think about what the district could afford to do, and came up with a revitalization plan.

“It was around 1997 or a little before that,” said Board of Education President Larry Bowling, “that we decided to do what we could do for our buildings … and started to put together a repair program.

“We were about ready to start bidding out that project when the state received a bunch of money from a tobacco settlement and we knew the state money would be available to us.

“There’s probably not another district in the country — we know there’s not another one in the state — that has all new buildings,” Bowling said. “This (high) school looks new, from the start of the old Taft High School.”

The entire facilities project included the construction of eight new elementary schools, replacing 13 older buildings, some over 100 years old, at a cost of $17 million each; the mostly new construction of Wilson Middle School that cost $13 million; a $15 million renovation of Garfield Middle School; and a $54 million renovation of Hamilton High.

The project was paid for by two bond issues in 1999 and 2006, totalling $117 million, and $120 million from the Ohio School Facilities Commission.

“We made the conscious decision when we started that we would do Hamilton High School last because we weren’t sure the money would hold out,” Bowling said. “Not many people benefited from the recession, but we did because we got just about everything we desired for the building.”

The high school renovation began in August, 2001, with the construction of a new 13,160 square foot auxiliary gymnasium, followed by a new library and media center, career center, main entrance, six new classrooms and a foreign language lab in January 2002.

January 2004 saw the addition of a Fine Arts Wing, with new band and orchestra rooms, an art gallery, practice rooms and a renovated auditorium lobby area.

The next phase came in August 2010 with the 54,000 square foot Athletic Center, featuring new wrestling rooms, seven new team and student locker rooms, new offices, an indoor walking track and a training room.

April 2011 saw the new cafeteria, and January 2012 an enclosed walkway between the high school and the Career Technical Center, 10 new CTC classrooms.

The last piece of the puzzle was the renovated Rotary Auditorium, which included new stage rigging and lighting, a new proscenium, backstage mirrors, a video projection system, new carpeting and acoustical treatments and a new sound system that includes 48 wireless microphones.

Bowling said that the results are impressive, even considering the challenge it was to keep the school open while the renovations were done as there wasn’t a back-up location suitable for the high school.

“For 13 years, this has been an inconvenience for everybody,” Bowling said. “We had no choice but to build this in phases and keep the school open… so they had to endure.”