Editorial: Can new architect put Hempfield project back on track?

Hempfield Area School District has a new architect.

The board hired Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates of Mechanicsburg after the resignation of Core Architects in February. It is the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of the school district’s plan to renovate the high school.

The project has dragged on for years. The opening of bids in August saw the total price tag jump to $150 million. The board subsequently rejected all bids and went back to the drawing board. Then the unexpected resignation of the architect — not to mention the superintendent — threw in even more uncertainty.

Exactly where is this all headed?

“Obviously, we’ve had a setback,” said Vince DeAugustine, chair of the building and grounds committee.

However, he expressed confidence in the “stronger team” assembled. The board has SitelogIQ as construction manager. Then there’s McKinley Architecture and Engineering, hired in October as the district’s “owner’s representative” — a kind of middle man between the district and project manager. Now there is the new architect.

DeAugustine said there will be “no issues moving forward.”

“(McKinley’s) on our team, Crabtree’s on our team, and our team here is all moving in one direction,” he said.

The question remains: What direction is that?

After years of meetings and hirings and contracts, there is no finished product. There isn’t even one started. There is only an idea of what the outcome might be, a lot of dissension about how it’s being accomplished and a stack of checks written with no return.

Core Architects left with $2.4 million of district money — and there is still no determination of how much of their work might be usable. The district raised taxes by 2.3 mills, or more than $50 for every $22,000 of assessed property value. The taxpayers are paying for a project that does a lot of hiring and has yet to build anything.

The project was expected to take three years to accomplish. That is three years of students and faculty inconvenienced. Now it’s three more years of ninth graders warehoused at Harrold Middle School instead of attending the high school; those students already are impacted by the delay.

It’s good there’s an architect again. It’s good the board believes it can take years of lemons and build a lemonade stand.

But to date, there hasn’t been much to inspire confidence from the people footing the bills.