New Hempfield Area architect approaching high school project from the ground up

Hempfield Area School District’s new architect is beginning at square one as it takes over the district’s proposed multimillion-­dollar high school renovation project.

“While … being respectful of all the work that’s been done, we are still asking all the questions as if we’re starting from scratch, to make sure we validate this process,” said John Beddia, managing partner at Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates of Mechanicsburg.

The firm joined the school’s team in April, replacing Core Architects, which resigned in February. Core had been working with the district on the renovation since 2022 and had been paid more than $2.4 million before company representatives resigned.

The renovation project has been on hold since August, when bids for some of the work revealed the project’s cost had ballooned to almost $150 million, nearly $20 million more than expected. The interior of the high school was proposed to be gutted and renovated over the course of the next three years, leaving most of the exterior intact with some additions.

Interim Superintendent Kimberlie Rieffannacht said the architect is validating all the information collected on the project. The next step is to create a plan for the next phase of the project, she said, while considering what the building will need to meet the school’s educational programs.

The district’s solicitor and administration are negotiating a contract and terms with Crabtree that will be subject to board approval, Rieffannacht said Tuesday.

Related:

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Envisioning the project

Beddia and Rieffannacht said the architects have begun meeting with high school administrators and department chairs for “visioning” exercises to discuss the project.

“We didn’t make decisions today, and we don’t have a grand plan after today, but what we do have is that awareness of where we’re going, and that conversation of, these are the folks that we are going to be working with moving forward,” Rieffannacht said.

District administrators also toured a facility that was designed by Crabtree, Rieffannacht said, and talked over their design process.

“We’re in the mode right now where we’re listening, and we’re asking lots and lots of questions,” Beddia said. “We’ve talked a lot about how to move forward. The engagement process and the communication process is pretty much what we’ve focused on so far.”

The architects want to design the school not just for the current moment but to be flexible for the next 20 years , Beddia said.

“We realize I’m sitting asking people to answer the questions they’ve already been asked,” he added. “But I think everyone was very receptive and understood what our approach (is) and the amount of detail for this visioning exercise.”

Purpose behind building

Beddia showed a graphic to school board members this week that detailed the high school’s rooms, organized by their class uses. The architecture firm plans to have more in-depth discussions to explore each of the subject areas in the building.

“This is a programming analysis that we would typically go through to organize the building and look at it from a different perspective,” he said. “It allows you to look at this in a very different way. This is kind of the framework for how we’ll make decisions and recommendations on how a building solution (will) address your educational program.”

Beddia noted that Crabtree wants to reexamine the enrollment projections done at the beginning of the high school renovation process.

“We’re going to re-look at your 5- to 10-year actual enrollments, we’ll look at projections, we’ll use GIS software, we’ll talk to the zoning and municipal folks, see where housing permits are at,” Beddia said. “A significant planning number is the number of students. So once we have that program together, the real test is, is this the right amount of space for this amount of students, and what happens in five years when it changes, and what happens in 10 years?”

Also present at the meeting were representatives from construction manager SitelogIQ and owner’s rep McKinley Architecture and Engineering.

Damion Spahr, project executive with SitelogIQ, noted that the company is helping the district with finding grant funding for the project. The company will reuse mechanical, electrical and plumbing plans as much as possible for the project, he said, and is looking into opportunities for portions of the construction, auch as roofing, to start as early as this summer.

“As the project goes, we’re going to examine every piece that we can to find any way that we can to bring funding to the district and for the project,” Spahr said.

Sean Doyle, director of operations with McKinley, described his outlook as optimistic. He highlighted the learning experience of having gone through the early parts of the project previously.

“Don’t dismiss the value that is produced in having gone through this,” he said. “The value that has occurred by going through this once and learning and having a better understanding of the current construction and the current bidding environment, obviously the knowledge that SitelogIQ and Crabtree bring to the table in the K-12 market in (Pennsylvania) is incredible. I think it’s really exciting.”