St. Francis de Sales School in Toledo is in the middle of a $26 million, three-phase transformation of its West Bancroft Street campus — a project that will add new athletic facilities first, then free up space inside the existing school for classrooms and performing arts, according to the Toledo City Paper, which toured the construction and interviewed the school’s president.
The scale surprised even the man who has lived with the blueprints. School president V. Rev. Joe Newman, OSFS, who lives in a residence attached to the school with other Oblate priests, told the Toledo City Paper he climbed onto the roof one day and looked across the site: “I’ve been looking at blueprints for years… I go, ‘Wow, this is bigger than I thought,'” he told the Toledo City Paper.
St. Francis is owned by the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales and approaches student formation through four pillars — academic, spiritual, physical and social — according to the Toledo City Paper. As the school looked ahead to its 75th anniversary in 2030, administrators assessed how the campus served each area. “We need more academic space and we need more classrooms, which is a great, great need to have in a school,” Newman told the Toledo City Paper.
The sequencing is the key to the plan. Athletic spaces — locker rooms, a weight room, a wrestling room and coaches’ offices — currently occupy portions of the original school building, the Toledo City Paper reported. Building a new athletic facility first lets those programs move out, so their former spaces can be renovated for academics and performing arts. “We want to invest heavily in the mission,” Newman told the Toledo City Paper.
Phase one is already taking shape: steel is up, walls are going up and the roof is on the new athletic building, which is expected to be ready for the 2027-28 academic year, according to the Toledo City Paper. It will include locker rooms, a weight and fitness area, athletic training space, a wrestling room, athletic offices, concessions and restrooms, and something the school has never had on campus — dedicated hockey training space with synthetic ice, while the hockey program keeps its relationship with Tam-O-Shanter, where it practices and plays, the paper reported.
The new locker rooms will also support football, soccer and lacrosse and help St. Francis make greater use of its on-campus stadium, according to the Toledo City Paper. The school has played home football games less than a mile away at the University of Toledo’s Glass Bowl and will keep that arrangement for major games against rivals such as St. John’s Jesuit and Central Catholic, while the improvements should let smaller games come home, the paper reported. Soccer, lacrosse and track and field already compete on campus.
Phase two will renovate the spaces athletics vacates inside the existing school, creating additional classrooms and a dedicated performing arts space, according to the Toledo City Paper. Phase three, planned for completion by the school’s 75th anniversary in 2030, will add an indoor field house with 40 yards of turf, available to all St. Francis athletic teams and the school’s band, the paper reported.
The money is following the plan. As of September, approximately $18 million had been received or pledged toward the $26 million project, according to the Toledo City Paper, from graduates, parents and supporters including donors who no longer live in Toledo or Ohio. Among them are the LaValley family, longtime supporters whose name is on the school’s existing LaValley Field, the paper reported.
The investment is part of a wider building moment in Toledo. NewsForce247 reported this week that the $22 million Mission Point project has broken ground for 65 supportive homes in Toledo, and that Toledo AI Week is bringing free AI career training to Northwest Ohio workers — different projects, with the same underlying bet on the city’s future.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What we know: the $26 million, three-phase plan is underway, phase one’s athletic building has steel, walls and a roof up and is expected for the 2027-28 year, and about $18 million was received or pledged as of September, all according to the Toledo City Paper. What we are still waiting on: the remaining fundraising toward $26 million, and detailed timelines for phases two and three beyond the 2030 anniversary target.
What happens next: construction continues on the athletic building toward its 2027-28 opening, after which the interior renovation for classrooms and performing arts can begin. “Toledo matters,” Newman told the Toledo City Paper. “Great things happen in Toledo.”
Photo: St. Francis de Sales High School in Toledo. Photo: MrJacon000, CC BY-SA