Peters Township School District moves forward on new school
Maintenance continues on the former Rolling Hills Country Club property while Peters Township School District and the municipality move ahead with plans for the site.
The Rolling Hills clubhouse looks to be destined for the wrecking ball.
Peters Township School District has 2020 vision.
That’s the year targeted for the opening of a new high school at the former Rolling Hills Country Club site, according to a tentative time frame that was discussed during the board’s buildings and grounds committee meeting Monday.
At their regular meeting next Monday, board members plan to vote on several measures to advance the project, including authorization to submit documents to the Pennsylvania Department of Education as a start to the Planning and Construction Workbook reimbursement procedure.
PlanCon involves as many as 11 steps in establishing a district’s eligibility to receive money from the state for a major school construction project. Monday’s board action addresses the filing of Part A, Project Justification, and Part B, Schematic Design.
“We are at the beginning of design, certainly not at the end,” Kevin Hayes, principal and founder of Hayes Design Group, told board members, using a sports analogy: “We’re maybe at the end of the first quarter, with more quarters to play in the game before we get to the final design.”
Fine-tuning will occur as the process unfolds.
“We’re going to be meeting with all the stakeholders – yourselves as the board, the district administrators, the high school administrators, teachers, department heads, community – to get their feedback, to have them have an opportunity to see what we’re doing and understand why we’re doing it,” explained Hayes, whose firm conducted a high school feasibility study.
“Just as importantly, through all of that, we’re going to be updating the budget as we go forward,” he said. “We will continue to make sure that we have a design that meets or is under your budget and you can afford to build.”
The project budget as presented at the committee meeting stands at $89.746 million, which includes a $3.7 million-plus natatorium.
A new swimming pool to replace the aging facility at the existing high school is not guaranteed, though. It is in the conceptual design as a “deduct alternate,” meaning it could be dropped in future iterations as the overall financial picture shapes up more clearly.
“Particularly, for a large alternate such as a whole natatorium, you’ll get better value if it’s included in the base bid and deducted from it,” Dick Fox, president of architectural consultant Weber Murphy Fox, told the board.
An auxiliary gymnasium also is included in the design as a deduct alternate.
The concept for the new school at this point is a three-level structure with the main entrance at the top, providing expedient access to publicly used features such as the auditorium, main gymnasium and the Peters Township Community Television studio. At the current high school, the studio is on the lower level.
“The media department, and Channel 7 in particular, had suggested being closer to the front entrance because we have so many guests,” Principal Lori Pavlik said about the participants in various TV shows. “They also talked about having some of it be kind of a showcase, maybe having the control room encased in glass so that people walking through the building can see students working behind the scenes.”
Plans do not call for a new stadium, as events will continue to take place at the existing facility.
Access to the new school would be from East McMurray and Center Church roads, with separate entrances for staff members and student drivers. The area in front of the main entrance is targeted for bus loading and unloading, and could be used for public parking during evening events.
Board members expressed no interest in preserving Rolling Hills’ former clubhouse, which could be in the desired path for a public road traversing the nearly 200-acre property. The land is to be split about 50-50 between the school district and municipality, but subdivision has not yet occurred to establish an official demarcation.