Nearly a year and half after State College voters voiced their support for renovating State High, the State College Area School Board is taking offers from contractors for the bulk of the ambitious project.
The school board unanimously voted to open the project for bidding from construction companies on Monday, moving the complicated construction plans one step closer to becoming a reality.
“Getting to this point reflects a lot of work by so many people: our faculty and staff, administration, and our community who has given us input throughout this process,” board president Amber Concepcion said.
Ed Poprik, the State College Area School District Director of Physical Plant, said some preliminary site work has already been completed over the summer. Now it’s time to tackle “the building itself, and everything else,” he said.
The bids are broken up into seven different packages: site work, general construction, mechanical and HVAC, plumbing, fire protection, and food service.
“For the last six to eight months we’ve been constantly monitoring the construction market,” Poprik told the board. “We believe that this combination of packages will be the right one for this project.”
Under most circumstances, Poprik said a project this big would be broken up into four different bid packages. The district decided to break out fire protection, site work, and food service needs as extra packages as a cost-saving measure in order to avoid subcontractors and cut out the middleman.
Poprik expects to see somewhere between 50 to 60 bids for the project. Estimates for the project range from about $129 to $140 million, which Poprik said is to be expected for a project with “so many details and variables.” Of that total cost, only $84 million will come from funds from a tax increase, as approved by the voters in 2014.
Concepcion said there’s still plenty of work ahead of the school district. Once the bids are in and the school board has some hard numbers to work with, they’ll be able to determine which alternate construction proposals — like a green roof or a district kitchen — they’ll be able to include in the project.
“Up until this point, it was planning and drawing,” Poprik said. “Now the pencils are down and we get to start building something.”
