Notre Dame High School celebrated a milestone Friday with a first look at its new academic fieldhouse, showing off a three-story building that replaces the school's aging annex and will soon welcome students into its classrooms. The event drew students, staff and community members eager to tour the space less than a year after construction began.
Principal Jackie Friel said the school had made substantial progress in just a year and used the event to showcase that progress along with future plans, according to WFMZ. Notre Dame broke ground on the fieldhouse in 2025, and the school has said it raised $9.6 million toward completing the project, per the same report. Fundraising for the building has been tied to the school's Faithful Futures Campaign, which Notre Dame's February 2026 newsletter described as carrying a $14 million target to fully fund the fieldhouse.
At the groundbreaking in November 2025, the school said it had already raised two-thirds of that $14 million goal, according to Lehigh Valley Public Media. That same groundbreaking ceremony, held at the Bethlehem Township campus, came after the building had been described by the outlet as a $10 million project — a figure that doesn't line up with the $9.6 million figure cited in WFMZ's report or the $14 million campaign target, and the available reporting doesn't reconcile the differing numbers.
What's Inside the New Building
The fieldhouse includes eight spacious classrooms, four locker rooms, a wrestling room and a weight room, according to WFMZ's account of the first-look event. Lehigh Valley Public Media's coverage of the groundbreaking described similar plans, including locker rooms, coach offices and training areas for the football, baseball, softball and wrestling teams, along with a 6,000-square-foot gym, a 3,600-square-foot wrestling room and a 1,500-square-foot weight room. The school has said the finished building will serve all of Notre Dame's more than 500 students.
The size of the building itself has also been described inconsistently across available reporting. Notre Dame's February 2026 newsletter called the fieldhouse a 40,000-square-foot, three-story hub for learning, wellness and student growth, while a lehighvalleylive.com report on township planning approval put the planned size at 19,580 square feet. Those figures have not been reconciled in the available record.
Replacing a Decades-Old Annex
The new fieldhouse was built to replace the school's old annex, which WFMZ's report described as having been used since the 1970s. The project was designed to occupy the former annex's footprint, according to Lehigh Valley Public Media's groundbreaking coverage, while Notre Dame's Faithful Futures campaign page described the new structure as a modern, multi-purpose building meant to provide space for academics, physical education and athletics. Lehigh Valley Public Media's groundbreaking coverage placed the annex's construction in the 1960s rather than the 1970s, and a separate report from lehighvalleylive.com said the original one-story annex dated back to the 1970s.
Notre Dame senior LJ Simon attended Friday's event and toured the building, telling WFMZ he was excited about the new fieldhouse. Students like Simon are expected to see the new classrooms open after Thanksgiving, per WFMZ's report.
