Walk into room H-2 on Seven Hills Middle School's campus, and you may have to duck to avoid the dozens of bicycles hanging overhead.

It's one of the symptoms of overcrowding in the school's popular Bicycle Recycle program — overcrowding that will soon be alleviated with a new workshop built from a $1.4 million anonymous gift.

“It'll be the only million-dollar bike shop to exist on a school campus in the world, that I know of,” said Steve Davis, who founded and teaches the elective classes.

The donation came last spring, and an architect's renderings are already in. Construction bids will go before the Nevada City School District's board of trustees at their meeting Tuesday.

Move-in will be in May, “if all the planets align,” Davis said.

Bicycle Recycle regularly attracts observers from other schools and even helped Seven Hills garner the coveted California Distinguished School award this year.

It's unique because it pairs the antsiness of middle schoolers with basic mechanical skills, training them to refurbish bikes to donate to homeless people and disadvantaged children.

“Some kids are learning things nobody knows but a bike mechanic,” Davis said.

It's an age-appropriate shop class for the pre-teens — a bike is to a 12-year-old what a car is to a 16-year-old.

“With this age group, it's a step toward independence,” Davis said.

Plans call for a new shop twice as big as the current room. Instead of portable bike stands, it will feature 16 permanent workstations with tool racks.

At the current facility, a stash of about 250 old bikes — many donated from the sheriff's lost and found — is fenced in behind the building. A covered, secured shelter at the new building will guard the bikes from the weather and thieves.

One of the goals is to make the building feel less like a classroom and more like a workshop. The new room will feature exposed rafters and flooring that mimics a concrete shop floor.

Bicycles will hang from racks on the side of the room, instead of over the shoproom floor.

For the students, who were tinkering with bike brakes in their hour-long class Thursday, the program is about more than fixing rusty bikes.

This past spring, a group of about 50 students spent a Saturday operating a bike repair clinic for homeless people in Sacramento.

Then there's Jordan Jianninl, 12, who used his skills to fix up a bike and give it to his cousin, who had never owned one.

“We don't need to add to a stable of bikes if kids already have them,” Davis said. “We want them to think of someone else.”

To contact Staff Writer Michelle Rindels, e-mail mrindels@theunion.com or call (530) 477-4247.