As any North Central student knows, the closure of upper and lower D and K halls has significantly affected a typical day at school. The hallway has been transformed into a private pathway for construction workers and janitors to enter the auditorium. 

Walls have gone up between B and K as well as upper C and K. D hall has been cut in half, and the ease of getting from one side of the school to the other has been tossed out the window. Usually, at the beginning of a school day, D hall is full of people walking toward their classes in JEL, in the middle or back of the building or to choir classes and the natatorium. 

The choir hallways are still accessible when coming from the west side of the building, but if any student walks in from door 30, they will have to go all the way to B hall and around to reach art classes, the weight room, the cafeteria, and many other classes on the east and south sides.

Like most other students, I take specific routes to each class every day to get there the quickest or pass a bathroom or water fountain as needed. These routes have lengthened because of the closures. It’s not easy to get to N hall from J hall without D hall taking you straight there.

The minor inconvenience of a closed-off hallway and the harsher loss of the auditorium for the whole year is only the beginning. There are big plans for the North Central campus in the coming years.

The traffic before and after school is horrendous, even if you manage to beat the buses. There are proposed plans for a new stoplight at the north end of the building, and intersection improvement on the west side by the Westfield entrance. A sidewalk from 86th to 83rd street along Westfield has also been bid, I assume, to improve safety for students walking around the campus as well as for the surrounding neighborhoods.

Improvements in the building’s boilers and chillers are also set to happen, which will hopefully improve the battle between the tropical heat of upper J and the frigid cold of lower L. This development is in Phase 1, along with the auditorium.

Phase 2 and 3 will involve improvements to the bus storage, tennis courts, west gym and the main building. These phases are forecasted to have finalized design in the next six months. Phase 4, 5, and 6 will bring further renovations to the athletic fields and stadiums, JEL and the operation service center in what is currently Northview. 

These phases will last through 2026, at least. Current freshmen(class of 2025) may not even see the finalized improvements while still in high school. The class of 2022 will be lucky to see a new auditorium before they graduate. These renovations are nice to see in action, but I wish some of them could have happened before my last year here.