The State College Area School Board on Monday heard an updated cost estimate and got a look at tentative designs for the planned new Park Forest Middle School.
Current estimated costs for the 270,000-square-foot building on Little Lion Drive are $127.9 million to $136.9 million including site work, construction, escalation estimates, soft costs and contingencies, according to a presentation by Jeff Straub of project architect Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates. Those figures could increase by an estimated $2.8 million if various alternates are included.
A cost estimate prepared by a third party is expected to be presented in July with deeper detail and evaluation of the current construction market, Straub said.
“We’ve tried to build in some conservative estimating contingencies because of the volatility of the market,” he said.
The school board in March 2024 selected an 18-acre parcel off of Valley Vista Drive — and later acquired an adjacent 7-acre lot — as the site for a new three-story building to replace the existing nearby Park Forest Middle School. The current building on School Drive in Patton Township was last renovated in 1995 and had long been eyed by the district for major reconstruction or replacement.
Straub also presented exterior and interior designs for the new building, as well as current site plans, as the project team reached the 60% point in the plan development process.
Site plan work is in process and has recently focused on relocation and refinement of stormwater management, coordination of utility connections, refinement of receiving areas, site grading, transportation configurations and geothermal well field placement.
Current plans for the site show a parking lot for buses on the north side of the building, staff and visitor parking lots and parent drop-off and pick-up to the south and a service and delivery area to the west. It 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 potential grass play area is shown next to the tennis courts and an environmental education area near the soccer field.
Geothermal well fields would mostly be located under the soccer field and the north parking lot.
Randy Brown, district finance and operations officer, said that to accommodate everything that is needed it is a “very tight site plan.”
“We’re trying to design so that traffic can flow in multiple ways for different reasons at different times or if traffic flows need to change in the coming years we’ll have that,” Brown said. “We still don’t know whether there’s going to be red lights on to or off of Valley Vista.”
For the building, the classroom wing will have a three-story stacked design.
“That helps both educationally as students are moving up through sixth, seventh and eighth grades, but it also cost-wise is more effective stacking up through the building,” Straub said.
The exterior of the building will include manufactured stone, ground face masonry, wood grain metal paneling and dark bronze metal paneling.
Those elements will be incorporated in the building’s interior, along with concrete block, and ceiling clouds will be used to help optimize acoustics
A large canopy also will hang over the main entrance.
Inside the school, the administrative offices, auditorium, gym, library and cafeteria will have a centralized location on the first and second floors.
“Effectively you can shut down the classroom wings in their entirety and utilize the building for after school use,” Straub said.
In response to a question from board member Carline Crevecoeur about security measures, an issue raised by parents at a recent meeting in the wake of a foiled school shooting plot at State High, Brown said the project team is scheduling meetings with the school resource officers from local police departments and the district’s safety team to discuss their recommendations.
“Then we’;’ll use that information from them to inform the design as well as help us determine what are the safety features that are appropriate to share with the public and what others we will keep confidential for protection of everybody in the building,” Brown said.
Straub added that Crabtree, Rohrbaugh designs all of its school buildings to address differing levels of safety concerns and how first responders would be able to move through the facility.
“One thing we incorporate in all of our buildings is crime prevention through environmental design,” Straub said. “In a lot of the images that you saw, we’re trying to create a building that’s both an inviting and warm educational facility, but we are also trying to embed those security principals.”
Design is following a sustainability certification plan with the approach that was in place for construction of the new State High and three elementary school projects in recent years. The new Park Forest Middle School is expected to achieve LEED Gold certification, Straub said.
Sustainability elements include a full geothermal HVAC system, prioritizing daylighting and indoor air quality and a thermal envelope. One project alternate includes a solar array, for which the district is waiting on a decision for a grant from the state’s Solar for Schools program, and in tandem with the district’s solar program the new building has the potential to have net-zero emissions.
Another alternate being considered is bird-safe glass at strategic locations.
WHAT’S NEXT?
The project team recently completed its third round of interviews with Park Forest teachers about plans for the new building and has made adjustments based on their feedback
“The overall consensus is that the staff is extremely excited,” Brown said. “They’re very happy and they’re really pleased with a lot of the improvement that they are seeing. One of the things that they’ve come away with is that they just like we do want the best that is possible so they continue to ask questions about different things.”
Park Forest Middle School Principal Karen Wiser said she has appreciated the responsiveness.
“They’ve been great in responding to all of our needs and making sure we’re going to be creating the best learning environment for our students,” Wiser said.
Community meetings are expected to be scheduled in the near future.
After receiving the third-party cost estimate in July, the district anticipates 90% plan and construction plans, as well as a required hearing between August and October.
Bidding would then take place in October and November, with the board likely to review and accept bids in December.
Constructed is expected to begin in January or February 2026 and take two years to complete.
Plans have not yet been made for the current Park Forest Middle School once the new building opens, Brown said, nor for the Fairmount Building in State College, which is now largely unused by the district.
“We’ll be working with our architect team to talk about what spaces are necessary, what would be the viable spaces in either of those buildings, how can that come to fruition, what would that cost look like and all of those components,” Brown said.
