Valmeyer saw its fair share of damage from the heavy storms and tornado that buffeted the county on March 14, prompting urgency in some school district plans that were meant to get underway over the next few years.

Valmeyer Superintendent of Schools Eric Frankford spoke about the storm damage and resulting impact on some renovations to the district that have been in the works for some time now.

He noted the village has been working on a broad strategic plan for some time, looking to organize more events and activities to help the community see a bit more traffic.

Some particular interest has apparently been placed in Old Valmeyer and Borsch Park, which is busy chiefly during Mon-Clair League baseball games and the annual Midsummer Celebration over the July 4 holiday.

Some of these plans for growth have included the Valmeyer School District, mainly in regard to athletics.

“The idea was that we put together a complex down there where we could not only have high school sports, but we could have youth basketball tournaments and sports leagues, have kind of a shared youth facility, and that came out of strategic planning,” Frankford said.

He further explained that plans had been put on hold to a degree amid the COVID-19 pandemic. With plans slowly getting back into motion recently, the damage that’s been done to parts of the Valmeyer school building from the storm this past month have kicked plans up much sooner than anticipated.

Issues specifically center around the VHS softball field, with the winds having hurled the nearby bleachers into the backstop, causing substantial damage to the fencing.

Frankford said the team will be operating on fields in the area of the previous school in the bottoms, with plans to set up a permanent home in the bottoms currently in progress.

Another team of note is the VHS soccer team. While the soccer field was seemingly not impacted by the storms, an issue the team has faced is lack of a regulation field, thus there is similar interest in getting the team a full field that could potentially see other use as well.

These are just two aspects of the aforementioned sports complex Frankford mentioned.

“The storm damage probably did more to speed up that process than we would have liked,” Frankford said. “That was more of a three- to four-year plan, and now it’s more of a six- to eight-month plan.”

Another concern for VHS is the FFA greenhouse, which sustained some damage in the storm – though Frankford said the biggest issue that building is facing is its age. It’s also in need of relocation as it is currently too close to the main building based on building code.

Rather than repair the existing aged greenhouse, Frankford said it would be more cost-effective to rebuild it elsewhere, with a likely spot being near the current soccer field and first base line of the softball field.

Altogether, Frankford explained he is in discussions with a number of community members and organizations looking to put together these previously long-term plans as quickly as possible, though things are still in the early stages.

“There’s a lot of dominoes here that we have to set up and hope none of them knock each other down in short order,” Frankford said. “This went from a multi-year planning process to an immediate need. We have to relocate and find homes for our athletic programs, and we have a green house that basically has about one year left in it before it’s almost unusable. There are a lot of things at play and a lot of balls in the air. Right now we’ve started discussions, and hopefully those discussions move quickly.”