North Penn nears bids for first phase of high school renovations

 The first phase of renovations to North Penn High School could soon go from plan to reality.

School board members saw the latest version of those renovations, voting ahead a request to bid out major renovations to two key sections of the school starting next year.

“When we get into phase two later, there will be portions of the building that will be altered, and in those alterations some of those spaces will feel like very different space. But K and L pod, in general, will look they currently look, just new,” said architect David Schrader.

Renovations to North Penn High School have been discussed at length by the school board and district administrators over the past two years, with the latest design building a large addition between the current school’s A-pod and H-pod, smaller additions in the F-pod and J-pod, and updated utilities, fixtures and finishes throughout the school.

In the school board’s facilities and operations committee meeting, Schrader and project construction manager Jamie Lynch gave an overview of the work that will happen during the first phase, with several changes since summer.

    A map of painted tiles inside the main lobby shows the various classroom “pods” throughout North Penn High School. (Credit: NPSD)
  

“The main goal for the site plan is to do any of the utility relocations that will help future phases move faster,” Schrader said.

As part of that utility work, a propane tank and fueling station currently located next to the transportation building and Crawford Stadium on the west side of the site, will be moved to the northeast corner of the parking lot closer to Valley Forge Road, to free up space for when a new transportation building is constructed just north of the current one.

“The intent of doing that is so that the buses will have continuity for propane filling, when we demolish the existing transportation center. This will allow us that transition time without having to worry about where the buses fuel,” he said.

In the past several months, the architect told the committee, the renovation design team has worked with teachers throughout the school to identify the quantities of classroom space and the cases, cabinets and other equipment that will be needed in each area once redone. Temporary classrooms will be installed in the school’s auditorium (four) and audion (two), in C-pod (two), E-pod near the library (two), and the cafeteria (four), with those conversions slated for phase one so the spaces are ready once work begins on other parts of the school.

“That is part of phase one: trying to do things now, so that some of the future phases have a little better opportunity for you to have continuity of education in the building,” Schrader said.

    Architect David Schrader shows an overhead site plan of North Penn High School, with areas to be renovated during a ‘Phase one’ project highlighted in red, during the school board facilities and operations committee meeting on Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (Credit: NPTV video)
  

As he spoke, the architect showed an overhead site plan of the current school’s various pods and connecting hallways, with the areas to be renovated, and the areas to be converted into classrooms, highlighted in red. Throughout K-pod and L-pod, exterior windows will be replaced, outside masonry repaired — “they have quite a bit of bricks falling, they have cast stone damage, and probably require quite a bit of cleaning” — and the roof of K-pod replaced, with some roofs atop the natatorium that have not been recently redone also getting repaired, the architect said.

In the L-pod, the swimming pool plaster will be demolished and reinstalled, the starting block and diving board replaced, new clocks added, and the deck tile “chipped up and reinstalled,” per the architect, with some wall tiles also replaced and removed as needed. New guardrails will be installed on the natatorium bleachers, new lighting and HVAC throughout, including new pool mechanical equipment, and new sprinklers and fire alarms behind new finishes.

Inside K-pod, the classrooms and hallways will have new finishes, restrooms will remain largely the same, doors and lighting upgraded, new sprinklers and HVAC equipment installed, and some hallways will see lockers removed to free up space for other uses.

“We’re reducing the locker amount significantly, and creating some little touchdown spaces in the hallways” for students to work, Schrader said, showing a rendering of a hallway with moveable seats stationed below a desk ledge, and the district’s interlocking “NP” logo on the walls. Student liaison Kaden Williams said he was glad to see the extra seating there.

“I absolutely love the idea of taking out some of the lockers, to make those little sit-down study spaces. As someone who sometimes finds it really hard to find places to sit down and work on my assignments, I feel like that’s a great idea to make use of some of the space we have in the school,” Williams said, and Schrader answered, “I think you’ll see quite a bit more of that” in the second phase.

Questions and answers

Board member Juliane Ramic asked how the school’s front entrance would handle the construction work and vehicles alongside students arriving for school every day, and Schrader said the two will be kept seperate, with the details still being finalized by the construction team and administration. The board member then asked about the scoreboard and clocks at the natatorium, and superintendent Todd Bauer said current plans call for the existing scoreboard at the natatorium to remain, with additional shot clocks added.

Safe schools chairman Jonathan Kassa asked if the plans were being designed with current safety and accessibility standards in mind, and Schrader said they were: “we are actually reconstructing the front entrance,” with the current front doors moved back to create a secure vestibule area instead of the current desk behind the doorway entrance. Board President Tina Stoll asked if the renovations also included energy efficiency measures, and Schrader said the first phase would include LED lighting throughout, new HVAC equipment “with much more efficient systems than were previously in there,” and new windows and roofs improving the efficiency and reducing energy usage.

    North Penn School District officials, inset, show Towamencin’s supervisors an outline of North Penn High School, the school’s various “pods” lettered, potential new additions outlined in red, and a possible renovation timeline at right, during the June 26, 2024 township supervisors meeting. (Screenshot of meeting video)
  

Committee chair Cathy McMurtrie then asked about the pool and if it would be tiled or plastered, and if either option was cost-prohibitive; Schrader said “right now, the intent is to do a demo and reinstallation of the pool plaster system — we’ll know for sure in several weeks,” and Bauer said the pool tiling and plastering would be included as an alternate in the bid package.

“So that will be presented to the board, as a decision point: how much tiling is going to cost, versus plastering,” Bauer said.

All of the committee members unanimously voted to move ahead the bid package advertisement for the full board’s next action meeting on Dec. 2, and McMurtrie said she was “really excited to see it.”

“It is on time, as we had anticipated, so we are off to a good start,” she said.

Timeline update

Lynch, the project construction manager, then gave an update on the timeline for various parts of both phases, including a presentation to Towamencin’s planning commission on Dec. 2 where the district will respond to feedback from that group and review letters from the township’s consultants. The project team have begun coordinating with PECO, the North Penn Water Authority, and the Towamencin Municipal Authority on sewer connections to the site, and talks are ongoing with PennDOT on whether traffic counts from an earlier study can be reused since no new students will be added to the school.

Phase one construction documents were issued in mid-November are currently being vetted by the outside consultants, Lynch added, with phase two design documents expected around mid-December, and bid alternates for phase one are being refined with details possible in the December facilities and operations committee meeting. The district has also issued an RFP for pre-purchase of electrical equipment with long lead times, “so it’s in our hands, well ahead of time,” he said.

Under the current timeline, the board could vote on Dec. 16 to put phase one out to bid, award a contract in February 2025, then issue a notice to proceed in March, with work starting on the natatorium in late May and on K-pod “after the kids leave” in June, according to the construction manager.

“The propane station relocation would happen in the summer of ’25, and we’d be doing strategic site work also in the summer of ’25. The end of summer of 2026 is the expectation for the completion of work in phase one,” Lynch said.

    North Penn High School staff leave an exit from the school’s A-pod, where an addition could be built connecting that wing of the school and the nearby H-pod, at left, on June 11 2024.
 By Dan Sokil | The Reporter   

Part of that site work for the addition: preparing the ground, literally, between the current A-pod and H-pod: “The base slab of A-pod is three feet higher than the base slab of H-pod. Not only do we have to clear everything out of the way, we have to put three feet of fill in,” Lynch said.

And for the transportation building, the layout has been determined, and the design team is examining whether a prefabricated building could be purchased via the state contract purchasing system. The first phase will also include some environmental abatement “because we are breaking off a corner of the existing A-pod, to make the new A-pod addition, so we have to look at what minimal abatement might be beneficial to us to perform in 2025,” Lynch said.

Phase two could then be bid out in “late spring, next year,” with bids due and awarded by the end of summer, and environmental permits submitted for review as soon as possible: “I wouldn’t expect to have a permit before July of ’25,” Lynch said, with an estimated five-year timeline starting with construction of the new addition in 2026, followed by renovations of the remaining pods performed in sequence through “summer, or perhaps the end of year” 2030.

Ramic then asked about the cost for the second phase, and whether the total estimated price of $260 million would hold, and Lynch said he would have more specifics when bids are back for the first phase and bid documents finalized for the second. As for the entrance, Lynch added a clarification: the K-pod front entrance revamp would not be part of the first phase, but will take place in the second.

“We are not removing and replacing the front doors, the front vestibule, the front steps, the front sidewalk, we’re reserving that for later in the project, after all the construction traffic is done. So that we don’t put a new front entrance in, and then — it’s a technical term, muck it up — through five years of construction. That front entrance has been reserved for later in the project,” Lynch said.

    Site plan for proposed renovations to North Penn High School, showing new additions to the school’s J-pod, between A-pod and H-pod, and behind the school auditorium outlined in red, as presented on June 4 2024. (Credit: NPSD)
  

Williams, the student liaison, asked for more specifics on the impact to the auditorium of adding temporary classrooms, “as a theater kid myself, I just would like to know.” Lynch answered that four new classrooms will be added at the rear of the current auditorium, with the stage and orchestra pit plus front seating remaining, and the auditorium would be closed for “approaching a year” while it’s renovated and new music classrooms are added.

“There’s going to be a period of time where all of those arts are located in temporary areas around the building. It’ll be tricky, and I know the school has plans for how they would do productions elsewhere while we’re in renovation, but we’re asking the contractors to go as quickly as they can,” he said.

Williams then asked if the audio both where sound and lighting equipment is controlled at the rear of the auditorium would be available during the renovations, and Coordinator of Communications Media Bob Gillmer said those systems could be run from the balcony or elsewhere in the smaller auditorium: “We just won’t have the under-balcony seats available to us for ticketing, that’ll be the change — until we get to the actual renovation of the full auditorium.”

Bauer added that he and administrators have already been meeting with teachers to plan their new spaces, and plan for the time they’ll be out of their current classrooms, comparing it to the recent renovation of the high school’s Crawford Stadium in 2020-21.

“We had a football season without a football stadium, and we had a track season without a track. I said to chemistry teachers the other day, ‘You’re going to have to teach chemistry without a chemistry lab at some point. That’s going to happen, where your labs are going to be offline, and we’re going to be renovating them.’ Every program, instructionally or extracurricular-ly, will have that spell, where they don’t have access to their facility,” Bauer said.

“It’s going to be uncomfortable for five years, a good five years, but hopefully in the end it’ll be a product that we’re all proud of. And it won’t look like 1971 any longer,” he said.

North Penn’s district facilities and operations committee next meets at 6 p.m. on Dec. 16; for more information visit www.NPenn.org.

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