The bids are in, and the State College high school project is looking like it will cost between $129 and $140 million.
At a meeting on Monday night, the district school board heard a report on the bids for the high school renovation and discussed potential bid alternates.
The low bids, which totaled $117 million, were used in the calculation of that total cost before adding in the soft costs of the project.
The following low bids will be voted on at next Monday’s school board meeting:
- Sitework: $9,624,000 — Glenn O. Hawbaker
- General: $70,755,000 — Lobar
- Mechanical: $13,063,000 — The Farfield Company
- Plumbing: $6,596,000 — Jay R. Reynolds
- Electrical: $13,700,000 — Bob Biter Electrical
- Fire protection: $1,711,100 — Allied Fire Protection Systems
- Food service: $1,574,000 — TD Food Equipment
The estimated construction cost was $108.7 million, meaning that the low bids came in at about $8 million over the projected project cost. However, business administrator Randy Brown said that the total estimate still allows the district to move forward with the project.
The future projects intended to be completed by the district in coming years are also still on pace to be financially acceptable for the board to pursue. That includes an elementary school project in 2018-19, a Memorial Field/downtown campus renovation in 2019-20, another elementary school project in 2020-21, and a potential middle school project in 2023-24. Brown said that this will total an estimated project cost of $100 million for the district in the next decade.
Brown said that no matter what the cost of the high school projects turns out to be, it “will allow the district to move forward with additional capital projects” that were previously planned.
The board also discussed the bid alternates, which are essentially bids on additional features that aren’t necessary to the project’s completion, but are at the board’s discretion to tack on to the project.
One such option, which came with some controversy at Monday’s meeting, was a $1.4 million Innovation Center that would be used for project-based learning and interdisciplinary education. The 7,500-square-foot center would include “flexible and adjoining spaces in which students experience a valuable learning process that includes generating ideas, developing a process to create, as well as solve real world problems, simulated or actual.”
Among the intended uses for the space are the First Robot challenge, building of energy-efficient structures, technology fairs and competitions, long-term projects like drones and eco-cars, and entrepreneurship experiences.
“I think it’s a place where we’re going to make our students active participants in learning, rather than passive recipients,” assistant superintendent Mike Hardy said. “I think we need to make learning a daring adventure.”
Hardy added that the center might be necessary in order to avoid the school district falling behind in the education world and the rise of STEM disciplines.
Board member Ann McGlaughlin, for one, took offense to the insinuation that this costly last-minute addition to the high school project is a necessity.
“For you to come here, and maybe you don’t realize it, insinuate we’re not going to get the job done if we don’t spend another $1.4 million, really offends me,” she said.
However, there was some support among other board members for the center. That bid alternate, along with others and the low bids, will be voted on at next week’s board meeting on Monday evening.
