The long awaited construction of the new Warren Tech South campus has begun, breaking ground on October 20th near Dakota Ridge. The new campus will offer innovative programs and easier transportation for future juniors and seniors at Dakota Ridge.

“The south Jeffco area has been waiting for this for a long time,” Eric Stout, Associate Principal for Warren Tech South said in a Jeffco press release. “This is the first step in not only bringing more options to high school students in the south area, but also, and more importantly, to increasing the options for all Jeffco high school students through more CTE program opportunities.”

The project is in the early stages, but the campus will open up in 2021. New programs will include music & audio production, aviation production, resort & event management, physical therapy, video production, and live sound & event production.

The construction doesn’t come without its struggles, however.

“During construction, we lost part of our parking lot to the south. Good news is that during COVID times we’ve only got half of our population that are here, so it’s really not impacting negatively on our students, so we still have plenty of spots. The spots that we lose out there, we’re going to gain here on the west side,” DRHS Principal Dr. Jelinek said.

“During construction, they’re trying to work around us to make sure that they’re not blocking our pathways. On the west side, there’s a bus lane — we’ve moved those busses into the front here, so that drop off and pick up are in the front instead of the west side, because they’re going to be digging a big trench right down that bus lane. We’ll still have pedestrian traffic, and it won’t affect the parking on that side, but it will impact the bus lanes for about a month,” Jelinek said.

There are high hopes for this new campus.

“I think it’s (the new campus) going to increase our enrollment. I think kids and families will say ‘hey how convenient is it that you literally will be able to walk out of one building and just walk halfway across the parking lot and just walk right into your other building.’ It takes out all the scheduling issues of taking a bus,” counselor Nile Smith said.

The campus is scheduled to be completed in August of 2021 with programs accessible to future juniors and seniors next year. For more information regarding the campus, visit the Warren Tech South page here.