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DOWAGIAC — Dowagiac Union High School’s welding class will soon have a new home.

The Dowagiac Union Schools district announced Monday during its monthly meeting its commitment to transforming the high school weight room into a welding facility with financial support from the Heritage Southwest Intermediate School District.

According to Superintendent Greg Blomgren, the ISD has committed $150,000 toward the project, which Blomgren estimates the total outbound cost to be between $380,000 to $450,000. The district expects the space to be ready by the time students return to school in the fall.

“We’re excited to have signed a contract and we’re going to be moving towards doing that,” Blomgren said. “To have the ISD come in and say, ‘we’re going to give you $150,000 to help build that program’ almost took away half of the expenses that we were committing to this project.”

Blomgren said the weight room will be split into two separate rooms, with the room closest to the west parking lot becoming the welding space and the other room serving as welding classroom space. Blomgren said he hopes the second room will become another CTE classroom in the future.

“We’re thinking we might have construction trades there in the future, but right now it will serve as the sit-down classroom for the welding space,” he said.

The current weight room will be moved to the site of the boys physical education locker room, which will be renovated to accommodate the space.

“We had a rep come down that had done some weight room design ideas for the weight room in the past and we feel very strongly with his help that we’re going to be able to redesign that space,” Blomgren said. “There’s going to be a little bit of cost to this but I think it’s definitely doable. To get that weight room functional for 30-40 students and to spend a little bit of money, so we have more efficient equipment, I think we can do that for a decent dollar amount to really make that space efficient.”