State College district set to spend $1.1M on high school natatorium upgrades
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- State College’s school district plans to spend $1.1 million to upgrade its natatorium.
- Key renovations include a new HVAC system and lane-timing devices.
- Most of the work will occur over the summer while the pool is drained.
The State College Area School District plans to spend more than $1.1 million to upgrade its natatorium this summer.
At its March 16 meeting, the district’s school board approved separate measures that will fund a replacement heating, ventilation and air conditioning system for State College Area High School’s natatorium and upgrade aging equipment. The 3,375-square-foot indoor pool and its accompanying facility were constructed in 1989 and entered full use in early 1990.
The largest component of the project will spend $570,850 to replace the natatorium’s HVAC unit, which has served past its useful life and experiences “ongoing issues with controls and compressors,” director of physical plant Mike Fisher wrote in a memo. The project will also make some slight modifications to the HVAC system for ease of maintenance.
The pools were already scheduled to be drained this summer under the natatorium’s existing maintenance schedule, ultimately coinciding with the HVAC system replacement. The HRANEC Corp. of Uniontown will work the project after securing the low bid.
Another company, If It’s Water from Downingtown, received a $209,507 contract to install a new filtration system, a bulk chlorine injection system and associated piping, valves and instruments. They will combine to help the district eliminate “an ongoing safety concern,” Fisher wrote.
Institutional Specialties, based in Pittsburgh, will install specialty lane-timing devices and a new digital display, complete with associated cabling, interfaces and software, for $105,000.
The final component of the project “encompasses a bid aspect incorporating mechanical and structural installations,” Fisher wrote. That portion, with an estimated cost of $245,000, will go out to bid by the end of March.
School board member Amy Bader said she encourages the district to provide an overview of the natatorium’s projected long-term maintenance costs to aid future budgeting efforts.
“I know we get these significant costs that pop up now and then and we talk about it’s been so long and we need to do it, but I don’t know if we’ve ever just had a sense of, ‘On a 10-year schedule, we usually spend X amount of dollars to maintain the natatorium,’” Bader said at March 16’s meeting. “It just might be helpful for understanding as we budget over the long term.”
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