New Park Forest Middle School comes in below budget. When will construction start?
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- State College’s district will spend about $134.5 million to build a new middle school.
- The new Park Forest Middle School project sits significantly below its expected budget.
- Construction should begin this summer ahead of an anticipated January 2029 opening.
The State College Area School District’s next large-scale project is expected to come in significantly under its budget.
After receiving bids for the project, the district is expected to spend roughly $112.2 million to construct a new Park Forest Middle School along Little Lion Drive off of Valley Vista Drive in Patton Township. That total — covering the base construction bids and a few selected alternate bids — arrives roughly 10% under the most recent project estimate, district officials said.
The project budget received significant savings once contractors proposed an alternate site wall design that reduced planned costs by another $4.5 million, according to Randy Brown, the district’s finance and operations officer.
“Although bids came in favorably and construction costs are lower than anticipated, the district continues to face significant capital needs in the years ahead,” Brown wrote in a memo to State College’s school board. “These savings will help reduce the overall financial strain as we plan for and address those future projects.”
The new middle school — including construction, planned alternate bids and soft costs — will fetch the district $134.5 million in total, according to a bid report from Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates, the project’s architect. That figure arrives well below its expected budget of $152 million.
The Dillburg-based Lobar, Inc. is expected to serve as the project’s general contractor after collaborating with State College’s district on several other projects, including the new State College Area High School. Other low bids were submitted by Midline Mechanical, Westmoreland Electric and the State College-based Glenn O. Hawbaker, Inc., among others.
Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates recommended adopting seven alternate bids for the project, including adding generator capacity for the new school, upgrading to a 30-year warranty for the building’s roof and installing a snow melt system beneath concrete walkways, ramps and stairs.
Notably, the project architect did not recommend adopting two alternate bids that would install bird-friendly glass at large windows and expanses at the new middle school. The alternates, which would each cost roughly $100,000, would install specialty glass at school stair towers and large windows at the new school’s main entrancees, library, gymnasium and cafeteria.
Brown said district officials are using Spring Creek Elementary School as a case study in exploring alternative options to bird-safe glass to potentially bring to other schools and future district projects. Mike Fisher, the district’s director of physical plant, said he met with a local birding club, which offered several suggestions, including the use of small stickers that could blend in relatively easily.
Fisher said the district is “highly unlikey” to have detailed information from its test case available before bids must be approved for the new Park Forest Middle School, though the project can hold on bid alternates for another 90 days. The district could choose to adopt the alternate bid to install bird-safe glass at the school’s largest windows and wait to decide on smaller windows in stairwells, where improvements could more easily be made later in the project timeline, Brown said.
Board member Amy Bader encouraged the district to offer additional information as the district’s governing body works to make a decision before bids are accepted.
“I have some concerns about the logistics of managing [large windows without bird-safe glass] over the long term,” Bader said. “I’m not discounting — $100,000 is $100,000 — but we also spent $70K because we wanted to retain the stone facades at the high school for aesthetic reasons. I, personally, would need some more information before I felt I could make a decision on that.”
Next steps for the new school
State College’s school board is expected to approve bids for the Park Forest Middle School project at an upcoming meeting. Previous project timelines called for work at the site to begin as soon as late May or early June.
According to the most recent project timeline presented at a public hearing in March, crews hope to achieve substantial completion of the project in November 2028 ahead of expected occupancy in January 2029. Earlier plans for the project called for the building to open in time for the start of the 2028-29 school year.
The new three-story middle school will span 277,000 square feet, nearly doubling the footprint of the existing school built in 1971. Officials say the district has overgrown the school, whose storage rooms, circulatory areas and even hallways have been used as educational spaces in recent years. The school, which has not received significant renovations since 1995, has mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems that will soon reach the ends of their useful lives.
The new school includes a “main street” layout that provides acess to classrooms and core facilities like the gymnasium, adutiroium, cafeteria and media center. The three-story classroom wing will see students physically “move up” through the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.
Interior renderings of the building show tall ceilings, open spaces and bountiful natural light in nearly every room — a priority for the district, which said windows and natural light were less common inside the existing middle school. The exterior will feature a blend of stone, masonry and both wood grain and dark bronze metal paneling.
Plans for the site call for a bus drop-off and pickup area just north of the school, while staff parking and parent drop-off and pickup sites will sit south of the building. The site will keep tennis courts and a soccer field on the parcel’s eastern side.
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