By MICHAEL PIPER, Staff Writer Since it opened as an all-girls school in 1966, Archbishop Spalding has never built a new building from the ground up and as recently as seven years ago, many of the facilities athletic and otherwise, remained much the same as they were nearly a full four decades ago. That is changing in a hurry. Spalding bought 22 acres of farmland for $2 million in January of 2003 and broke ground on a 34,000 square foot athletic facility, scheduled to be opened in October. The new building will have eight new versatile classrooms and house a mobile computer lab of 30 laptops. The main attraction, however, is a drastically enlarged gymnasium big enough to seat 1,000 with standing room on either end. There'll be a fitness center complete with elliptical machines, stack machines and free weights and there will be new facilities for the athletic trainer. Rounding out the new building is an enlarged parking lot stretching down the south side of the school and locker room facilities big enough to accommodate every in-season team. Needless to say, the building has athletic director Lee Dove almost giddy with anticipation. 'It will be a tremendous focal point of pride for every kid in the school,' Dove said. 'It's just a tremendous accomplishment for our school to be in a position to open a new facility like this.' Dove explained that when people marvel at the facilities of Baltimore private schools Calvert Hall, McDonogh, Boys' Latin, Loyola Blakefield and the like, what they are looking at is schools that have been established for, in most cases, well over 100 years. Calvert Hall was founded in 1845. Boys Latin is in its 161st year of existence. What that means, of course, is sprawling alumni bases and a well-established endowment. Spalding, on the other hand, managed to save nearly $1 million and finance another $1 million, according to Dr. Michael Murphy, the school's president. Spalding then embarked on its capital campaign which has raised more than $2.5 million of an estimated goal of $3.2 million. The new athletic facility will come to a total of around $5.3 million. 'This school has only been around for 40 years (39 actually) and we're where we want to be in terms of enrollment (1,100),' Dove said. 'This new facility will allow us to expand so much in terms of what we offer, from extra curriculars to class offerings.' The facility's main draw, of course, will be its athletic aspects. Spalding has had a competitive A Conference boys basketball program for several years and this will only help draw prospective student-athletes to the Severn campus, which will have a facility equal to or perhaps better than those of its A Conference rivals. 'When you have student athletes at your school you want to give them the ability to do as much as they can academically and athletically,' Murphy said. 'We want our student-athletes to have every opportunity to compete at the highest level and (the new building) will help.' One advantage to all involved is the expanded practice space, particularly for winter sports. In the past, basketball practices have run until 9 or 9:30 p.m. With a pair of gyms scheduled to be ready for the winter season, practices should be finishing up around 7 or 7:30 p.m. The new gym is only part of Spalding's proposed expansion. It is referred to as Phase I in a two-phase plan that will eventually include a new softball field, a football/lacrosse complex (potentially including FieldTurf or some type of synthetic field) and a track in what is now vacant farmland not even suitable for practice fields. Those further projects could be a ways off, however. 'There's no time frame for Phase 2 right now,' Dove said. 'It all depends on how long it takes us to pay off (the new gym) and it could be a while.' As of now, Spalding has agreed to name the fitness center portion after the late Lt. James Love, a graduate of the school who was killed in the first Gulf War. The naming rights for the gym are yet to be determined. Spalding hopes to get Phase II underway next year,.