On October 7, the City of Medford, Oregon, issued a permit for "North HS gym rebuild – accessibility & code upgrades" at 1900 N. Keene Way Drive, the campus of North Medford High School. Its reported value is $19.3 million.
That is the first public price we have seen on a building the school district has been without since February 2025, when its roof gave way under the snow. Through months of updates on the collapse and the rebuild, the district had not given a cost estimate.
The morning the roof came down
The trouble started with a crack. Students practicing in the gym on February 7, 2025 noticed one in a large wooden beam, and the gym was emptied and fenced off, the Rogue Valley Times reported. Four days later, at 8:41 a.m., several beams broke loose and set off alarms and a lockdown. At 10:47 a.m. the roof fell in. No one was hurt.
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The roof, built in 1965, was carrying an estimated 700,000 pounds of snow, Jefferson Public Radio reported. The school board declared an emergency on February 25.
The accounts of a recent upgrade cut both ways. The gym had a seismic retrofit in the summer of 2024 costing more than $3 million, and district officials credited its new wall reinforcements with keeping the walls standing, according to the Rogue Valley Times. Jefferson Public Radio reported that the same upgrades, by the district's account, reduced the roof's load.
Twenty months without a gym
North Medford lost about 75,000 square feet when the gym came down, KOBI-TV reported six months later. Volleyball and basketball moved to Oakdale Middle School, and engineers and insurance adjusters spent two to three months taking down ceiling tiles to judge the damage before rebuild plans could be settled. Insurance covered the structural costs, KOBI reported, while the school's booster club raised money to furnish the new interior.
A 14,000-square-foot temporary building for PE and weight training, which the school calls the Field House, went into use on October 10, 2025, according to the district's rebuild page.
Steel instead of wood
The new gym will not repeat the old roof. Plans call for steel girders in place of the wooden beams and added siding for lateral strength, KOBI reported in February. To meet accessibility rules it will add an elevator and a catwalk, which fits the permit's own description of "accessibility & code upgrades."
The district's timeline shows the work well underway before this permit. Insurance approval and an early work package came in January 2026, the concrete slab came out over spring break, the main work package started May 26 and the new gym floor slab was poured August 14. The district lists a building permit issued March 31.
The records don't line up neatly. The district's page gives March 31; the city record we hold for the $19.3 million rebuild shows it issued October 7. We couldn't confirm whether the March permit covered early work only. The value on the permit is the figure reported to the city, not a contract amount or the insurer's payout.
The beam problem didn't end at the gym
The collapse sent the district looking at its other glued-laminated beams. "We've had to examine all the glue-lam beams in the district, and we'll be replacing or shoring up several more," a district official told KOBI in February, including more beams on the North Medford campus.
A permit on the same campus fits that description. On September 28, the city issued a $102,000 permit for a "glulam retrofit" of the North Medford High Tech Arts building.
What comes next
District leaders said in February they hoped to finish by fall 2027; a KOBI report in April put completion in late 2027.
The rebuild comes as school construction picks up nationally. Institutional planning, which includes education and healthcare, jumped 9.4% in September from August, led by "a strong uptick in education, healthcare, and government building planning," Dodge Construction Network's Sarah Martin told Construction Dive.
How we count
Both permits come from the City of Medford's permit records and are dated by issue date. Values are the valuations reported on the permits, not contract amounts. The collapse, the schedule and the design come from the news coverage and the district page linked here.
See all of Medford's latest permit numbers, updated weekly.
Sources
- Rogue Valley Times, via the Herald and News, "North Medford High gym will be demolished, rebuilt after massive roof collapse" (February 13, 2025): heraldandnews.com
- Jefferson Public Radio, "Medford School District moves quickly to stabilize gym after recent roof collapse" (February 26, 2025): ijpr.org
- KOBI-TV NBC5, "6 Months After Roof Collapse, Progress Picking Up at North Medford HS" (August 22, 2025): kobi5.com
- KOBI-TV NBC5, "Leaders hopeful NMHS gym rebuild done by Fall 2027" (February 12, 2026): kobi5.com
- KOBI-TV NBC5, "Work starts on new gym at North Medford High School" (April 20, 2026): kobi5.com
- North Medford High School, gymnasium rebuild updates: north.medford.k12.or.us
- Construction Dive, "Education, healthcare projects boosted construction planning in September" (October 8, 2026): constructiondive.com
- City of Medford permits BCRM26-00765 and BCRM26-03199.
- Photo: Little Mountain 5, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons: commons.wikimedia.org
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