Parkland prepares for $25 million in capital projects on horizon: renovations for Schnecksville Elementary, construction of fire-ravaged bus garage

Morning Call (Allentown, PA)

Dec. 19--Parkland school board members were briefed Tuesday on $25 million worth of capital projects in the district slated to get underway in the new year, including much-needed renovations at the Schnecksville Elementary School and the reconstruction of a bus garage destroyed in a winter blaze nearly two years ago.

The renovations to the Schnecksville Elementary School comes with a price tag of $23.2 million. The work is being divided into two project phases.

The first will be to renovate the southwest portion of the building, built in 1962, by adding new classrooms and replacing the school's heating, ventilation and air conditioning system. The work is slated to cost about $9.1 million. The second project involves the demolition and replacement of the 1920s section of the building. This will involve new construction of about 17,000 square feet and a roof replacement. The cost for this phase is about $14 million.

Most of the project is slated to be complete by the 2022-23 school year, with demolition wrapping up during the summer of 2023.

The Parkland bus garage near the Orefield Middle School was destroyed in a February 2018 fire, but plans to rebuild now include the creation of a more centralized transportation department. About $1.5 million of the $1.9 million price tag is coming from insurance reimbursement for the destroyed garage, but another $390,812 will be used to construct offices and a wash bay at the new building.

The districts transportation offices are currently housed at the Troxell building, but constructing them within the new bus garage will consolidate everyone in the department on site. Construction is slated to begin next year with an expected completion date early in 2021.

New debt for the work is expected to take the form of about $10 million in borrowing for 2020 and 2021 and then $15 million in 2022. The list of capital projects will include expected work on the Kratzer and Centronia elementary schools in 2021 and 2022. But overall, the district's debt service obligations will slowly decrease over that period as some loans are paid off. Projected annual debt service for 2019 was $16.12 million and will be about $16.1 million for 2020 and 2021 and then fall to $15.6 million in 2022 and around $12.6 million in 2023 based on projects already in the pipeline.