State College Area School District’s planning for a new Park Forest Middle School moved forward on Monday night with board approval of final designs for a project that is now estimated to cost up to $152 million.
The district plans to construct the new 270,000-square-foot, three-story building on Little Lion Drive in Patton Township. It will be located across Valley Vista Drive from the existing, 54-year-old Park Forest Middle School, which was last renovated in 1995 and had long been eyed by the district for major reconstruction or replacement.
Plans for the project have been the subject of numerous meetings and public forums over the past two years, and Jeff Straub of architectural firm Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates said on Monday that little has changed from a design perspective over the past six months.
“Something that has changed substantially is the site work has evolved,” Straub said. “It’s become, quite frankly, a very complicated site with a lot going on as well as tying into the local infrastructure. That’s probably the largest change that we saw in the budget.”
Working with projections from TCT Cost Estimators and Massaro Construction Management, the district and CRA developed a construction budget range of $130.3 million to $144.9 million, which will be used as the bid range. With additional soft costs, financing fees and furniture, fixtures and equipment, the estimated total project cost is $152 million.
“We’re really looking at every single material, whether it’s a ceiling tile, flooring, HVAC equipment, brick on the exterior of the building, site work, that allows us then to create the overall summaries for the project,” Straub said.
Plans for the new school include a main entrance that will lead to a public lobby and what Straub previously called a “main street” accessing the main gymnasium, auditorium, music space and cafeteria. A second-floor media center will have a centralized location overlooking the main street with views out onto the campus and surrounding park.
The layout will allow for after-hours use with the ability to lock down the classroom wing.
The classroom wing will be stacked for students to move upward through sixth, seventh and eighth grades. A “student street” design will also include science commons, art and languages spaces and more.
For the building’s exterior, materials will include manufactured stone, ground face masonry, wood grain metal paneling and dark bronze metal paneling.
A parking lot for buses will be located on the north side of the building, with staff and visitor parking lots and parent drop-off and pick-up to the south and a service and delivery area to the west. The plan also maintains the tennis courts and soccer field on the east side of the parcel and locates a stormwater basin at the far eastern end of the site near Valley Vista Drive.
A traffic analysis calls for a traffic signal signal at the intersection of Little Lion Drive and Valley Vista Drive. As part of the submission to PennDOT, the school board also on Monday approved a memorandum of understanding with Patton Township affirming the district will pay for the signal and installation. The Patton Township Board of Supervisors was scheduled t vote on the MOU on Tuesday night.
Turning lanes and traffic calming measures are also anticipated as part of the work.
The board is next expect to authorize permission to bid the project on Feb. 16. Bids will be received by March 24, with possible extension to March 31, reviewed on April 6 and awarded on April 20.
A state-mandated Act 34 public hearing is scheduled for March 23.
Conditional use and land development approvals from Patton Township are also still pending.
Construction is expected to begin in mid-May and be substantially completed in November 2028 for a January 2029 opening.
SCASD has not yet determined what it will do with the current Park Forest Middle School when the new building opens.
According to the 10-year district capital plan presented to the board on Monday, several challenges will need to be addressed. Those include replacement or rerouting of the sanitary sewer main that currently runs underneath the building, retaining the front parking lot as overflow parking for the new school and “numerous” stormwater management issues Numerous such as an insufficient catch basin, runoff from neighboring properties and low-lying fields that stay damp.
SCASD’s Office of Physical Plant and CRA performed a preliminary scoping of of the site as a possible location for a new transportation terminal. The district’s current bus garage near Radio Park Elementary School is past its useful life and recommended for replacement.
“At first glance, the site (assuming the building is razed) has the potential footprint and power requirements to support a new transportation terminal that can house facilities for maintenance of multiple bus fuel types, as well as charging stations if the district moves toward electric options,” according to the capital plan presentation.
The rough estimate for constructing the new transportation hub at the Park Forest Middle School site is $10 million to $20 million.
