Monday, March 10, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.
Ground will be broken Tuesday in Summerlin for what will be the largest Christian school campus in the state.
Faith Lutheran Junior/Senior High School plans to move to a 116,700-square-foot facility on 33 acres at Hualpai Way and Oakey Boulevard at the beginning of the 1997-98 school year.
The new school, which will have the capacity to serve 1,000 students, will be the sixth private school to locate at Summerlin. The Howard Hughes Corp. did not disclose terms of the sale of the property to the Lutheran school, which opened its doors in 1978. It has 254 alumni and has a current enrollment of 350. Administrators project 500 students will enroll next year.
Faith Lutheran, with faculty and staff of about 40, currently operates at 1251 Robin St., off Vegas Drive east of Rancho Drive, in a 22,000-square-foot building that formerly housed a Mormon church. The Clark County School District has agreed to acquire the Robin Street site to expand its Advanced Technologies Academy magnet high school.
Tuesday's groundbreaking will include a presentation by four ninth-grade students at the school representing the Class of 2000. Speeches also are scheduled by Clark County Commissioner Erin Kinney, Faith Lutheran School Board Chairman Don Reed and Principal John Haynal.
"Our goal is to offer the best private parochial junior and senior high education in the Las Vegas Valley, providing young scholars a safe environment and a solid base of support that will enable them to become community leaders," Haynal said in a prepared statement.
"Faith Lutheran will fill an important and unique niche within the Summerlin educational community," added Dan Van Epp, president of the Summerlin division of the Howard Hughes Corp. "While Faith Lutheran is Summerlin's second private high school, it is the only private high school in Summerlin with a Christian orientation. We are pleased to form a partnership with Faith Lutheran to increase the educational choices for both our residents and others throughout the community."
The $14.5 million campus, designed by Kitrell Garlock and Associates and to be built by Grove Inc., will include four buildings. They include a classroom-administration building with 33 classrooms, science and computer labs and a library and resource center. A 1,000-seat chapel will double as a theater for school productions.
The other buildings will be a 1,200-seat gymnasium and a 10,000-square-foot student activity center that will serve as a multipurpose facility for dances and other school functions.
The Louise Heitkotter Memorial Football Field and the Duff Gerhart Memorial Baseball Field, a 500-car parking lot, softball and soccer fields, tennis and basketball courts also are planned. Faith will move up to Class AA athletic competition in the next school year.
The Faith board of directors has begun a capital campaign, "Faith for a New Millennium," to raise $4 million to fund construction. More than $1 million already has been pledged as a matching grant for the facility.
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