Lancaster Catholic High School got the greenlight from Manheim Township zoning officials this month to exceed the maximum building height for a new auditorium.
The approval signals the school is moving into the final phase of its Cherish Love Honor campaign, the first part of a multi-year upgrade to the school’s facilities.
Lancaster Catholic requested to exceed the 35-foot maximum on building height by 19 feet for the auditorium, arguing in the request that a higher ceiling would improve acoustics and allow for a fly space for sets during performances.
The project also includes building a new kitchen and a faculty dining area.
Construction will result in the loss of some street parking on bordering streets, but the school proposed alterations to its parking lot to account for them. Alterations would add landscape islands to the lot to improve pedestrian safety and add more lighting and physical spaces, according to the request.
The Cherish Love Honor campaign is the first phase of a much larger plan to remake Lancaster Catholic’s campus, an effort former school president Tim Hamer previously said would renovate “the entire facility, top to bottom.”
The effort is the most expensive facilities project in the school’s nearly 100-year history, funded entirely by donations. In total, the estimated cost was between $25 million and $30 million, spread between separate phases. This Cherish Love Honor campaign phase of renovations accounted for $11.9 million of that total.
Past improvements made under the campaign umbrella included adding air conditioning, a new STEM center in 2020, a dining center in 2024 and a new multimedia learning center completed last year.
The first phase raised $14.2 million in donations from 1,467 gifts. This exceeded the school’s original goal by nearly $2 million. School President Kyla Hockley said in a statement to LNP | LancasterOnline that “planning and fundraising efforts” for the final part of the renovations are yet to be shared.
There’s no current end date for construction. The school said it will release additional details as they come.
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