Spanning close to 49,000 square feet, Thornton Academy’s new Miles Field House is a commanding presence at the center of the Saco school’s 80-acre campus. It’s even more striking on the inside.
Yarmouth-based architect William Harke and New York-based Labella Associates, working with Thornton’s facilities director, Matthew Cook, made optimal use of the space, to create a multipurpose sports facility.
The building boasts a center basketball court — with a $160,000 removable floor, which can be disassembled and stored when not in use, to protect the surface.
Flanking both sides of the main court are two additional full courts, lined for volleyball, basketball and tennis. A flexible “curtain” can descend from the ceiling to wall off the courts so that three events can be hosted concurrently.
Thornton Academy fields 52 sports teams for its 1,500-student population, so practice and playing surfaces are in high demand.
The school has an long history of athletic achievement, racking up 56 state championships since it was founded in 1811. Football teams have won seven Class A state championships since 2012.
The new field house also has a three-lane, 55-meter sprint track. On the mezzanine level, there’s a three-lane, 200-meter track.
With a seating capacity of 2,700, the building can also accommodate non-athletic school events.
It replaces the smaller Linnell Gymnasium, built in 1963 to serve a student body of 650. As the school population grew to 1,500 students in grades 6-12, the facility had become inadequate. The building’s future is under review, but in the near term it will be utilized by middle school students for basketball, volleyball and wellness classes.
About Thornton
Thornton Academy is Saco’s public high school, and accepts students from Arundel and Dayton.
It functions as a private day and boarding school as well, and is home to students from 26 countries. Tuition for the 2026-27 school year will be $16,450. The base price for boarders will be $55,400.
In addition to the new field house, a former facilities building next door was renovated in 2025 into a 4,000-square-foot fitness center.
The projects broke ground in 2024, but were 10 years in the making, according to Jennifer Day, who is director of development and alumni relations and gave Mainebiz a recent tour.
Most of the funding was private money, Day said, from individuals — many of whom were alumni, spanning five generations — businesses, Saco & Biddeford Savings, other banks and credit unions, the Purvis family, Rotary clubs, sports boosters and private foundations including Maine-based Sam L. Cohen and Davis Family foundations and the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Edward E. Ford Foundation.
A significant portion of funding also came from the sale of real estate and prudent investment of funds, Day added.
The field house is named for Roger & Lydia Miles. Roger is an alumni and a former member of the board of trustees who in 2016 made a catalyst gift that jump-started the Athletic Complex Capital Campaign.
Westbrook-based Benchmark Construction was the general contractor.
“We aimed for local contractors as much as possible,” Day said. In fact, some of the electricians working on the project were Thornton graduates.
The Hill football stadium and track are next up for renovation, starting this month. The $1.2 million project is targeted for completion in time for pre-season this fall.
