CRANBERRY TWP — Cardinal Wuerl North Catholic High School will open Tuesday to students for the first time.

Chuck Goetz, director of operations, said all construction, road and landscaping work has been completed aside from some minor items for the $70 million school.

For about two weeks, teachers and faculty have been setting up classrooms and preparing the building for the start of classes, he said.

“The teachers are in. They are getting their rooms set up. All the furniture, books and display boards are in,” he said.

The school has been accepting new students throughout the summer, and it has an anticipated enrollment of about 300.

Last year the school, which was at its longtime location in the Troy Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, had an enrollment of about 200. The school includes grades 9 through 12.

One of Bishop David Zubik’s goals for the new school is to give students from a wider area the opportunity to attend a Catholic high school, Goetz said.

The school estimates that about 180 of the students come from the Seneca Valley, Mars, Pine-Richland and North Allegheny school districts. The remaining 120 come from other areas including Pittsburgh, Shaler, North Hills, Freedom, Butler, Slippery Rock and Avonworth, Goetz said.

The 185,000-square-foot school that is on 71 acres will have the capacity to hold 1,000 students, though one classroom wing will remain unfinished for the first several years. For the first year the school will employ 25 full-time teachers and 40 total staff.

Many students will arrive at the school by bus.

State law requires all public school districts within a 10-mile radius of the school provide busing to the school.

For Cardinal Wuerl, this includes Seneca Valley and Mars.

Some of the students who live outside those districts also ride buses because the school operates seven of its own.

Other students will get dropped off by parents or drive their own vehicles.

Students who have permission from their parents can get a parking permit. Of the 400 parking spaces on campus, about 200 are allocated for student parking.

Though the student lot will have more than enough spaces for the first couple years, the school may consider expanding it or instituting a lottery system for the spaces later, Goetz said.

Sgt. Chuck Mascellino of the Cranberry Township Police said the first week will be a “litmus test” to see how traffic flow is affected on the roads near the school.

“We’ll have to see how it goes. I don’t expect it to have a great impact on traffic,” he said.

In anticipation of the new traffic coming to and from the school, the township and the state Department of Transportation have made changes to some of the surrounding roads.

A new road, Hillmont Drive, was built to serve as the main access to the school. It also connects Old Mars Crider Road to Mars Road.

The intersection of Franklin Road and Hillmont Drive got a new stoplight.

The intersection of Franklin Road and Route 228 was widened so that it has dedicated left turn, right turn and straight lanes.

A right turn lane was also added to Route 228 for westbound traffic. Eastbound traffic on Route 228 is prohibited from making a left turn into that entrance to the school.

The road improvements should help alleviate potential traffic issues that could arise from the additional traffic, Mascellino said.