Weight and wrestling room renovations are moving forward in Palmerton Area School District, with the board settling on a design Tuesday night.

By an 8-1 vote, Palmerton approved a drawing and a $26,000 architectural services and structural engineering proposal from ALLOY5 Architecture in Bethlehem, which will prepare bid specifications for the work.

The renovation, which will include a team locker room for wrestling and separate boys and girls shower facilities, among other improvements, has been a hot topic of conversation at Palmerton meetings for the past several months.

According to district officials, renovations to the facility, which hasn’t seen a major update in more than 20 years, have been driven by the need for a better building layout and more equitable locker room space as the popularity of girls’ wrestling continues to explode in Pennsylvania. Palmerton currently has one female high school wrestler, Gretchen Schaible, who has no option to shower at the facility after practice with the current communal shower setup.

The current building layout also requires male wrestlers to walk across the weight room before and after showering.

Drawings approved Tuesday night show two locker rooms, around 150 square feet each, and two shower facilities, averaging 255 square feet, each with 7 showers.

A 53-square-foot coach’s office and an 84-square-foot assisted use bathroom with a shower are also included in the plans.

Joe Faenza, district facilities director, told the board Tuesday the cost of the project is estimated at $375,000 for general construction and $120,000 for heating, ventilation and air conditioning.

The lone no vote on the drawings came from director Earl Paules, who has been critical of the cost of the project from the outset.

“This project has been pitched as $375,000 and I think the total project price, which we’re looking at a half-million dollars, should have been on there from the beginning,” Paules said. “When we talk about $375,000, that isn’t terrible, but when we go to $500,000, we are strapped for a whole lot of money. I’m not disputing it, I just think the public needs to know.”

Parents have advocated for the renovations over recent months, specifically a more adequate shower situation to cut down on possible skin infections that go hand-in-hand with wrestling.

“This renovation is to ensure the health of our wrestlers and give adequate facilities to our young men and women who pour their hearts out on the mat for their team, their coaches, their family and their school,” Jennifer Ortiz said at a February board workshop. “Even if my son is out of school by the time this renovation happens, it doesn’t change the way I feel. This program deserves this renovation.”

The district has kicked several designs back and forth, with most conversation centered around how to get the most amount of showers while not cutting back the square-footage of the weight room.

The drawings approved Tuesday keep the weight room at 2,700 square feet while increasing the amount of proposed showers from what was originally 6 combined in the two locker rooms to 14.

“The one thing we did not want to see happen,” Palmerton wrestling coach Justin Peterson said, “is to put our team ahead of other sports here and shrink the size of the weight room, which everyone uses. We’d like all the showers we can get, but not at the expense of other sports.”

District and ALLOY5 officials said the project’s next steps include bidding the work and setting up a phasing schedule for construction.