ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Allentown School Board on Thursday approved the next design phase for a new school planned at the former Allentown State Hospital property on the city’s East Side.
Board members voted 7-0 to approve the project justification and design development for the school, which will serve about 1,200 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
The school will be built on 16.7 acres off Hanover Avenue. Allentown School District bought the land for nearly $15 million in February from the developer City Center Group.
The school is estimated to cost $126 million to $132.6 million to build.
The K-8 campus will sit amongst City Center’s Northridge development project, which includes plans for housing, as well as commercial and health care facilities, such as assisted-living centers and a “micro-hospital," according to a presentation from the developer last year.
Design phase moves forward
With the Thursday vote, school directors approved the design for major program spaces in the building, the specification of materials and systems, final site and building plans for land development, sustainability goals and the cost of the project.
The school’s design team presented the building’s layout and features in a presentation before the vote. They also addressed public concerns about the environmental safety at the school site.
Superintendent Carol Birks said construction of the 195,000-square-foot, theme-based school is a massive undertaking at a time when school districts across the state are scaling back.
“We’ve been very unapologetic about how we want our students to have the state-of-the-art experience,” she said.
“We’ve been very unapologetic about how we want our students to have the state of the art experience."Carol Birks, Allentown Superintendent
Birks said the district will post updates about the building project on its website.
There will be an advisory group assembled to get community input on naming the school and developing its programming.
Mike Pickens, senior preconstruction manager for SitelogIQ, said he anticipates the land development phase of the project to begin next month.
That would put the district on track to start the bidding phase in March and the site development in April.
The school would open for the 2027-28 school year.
New school layout, features
A representative from Breslin Architects highlighted features of the new school at Thursday's meeting.
The building will be arranged with a vertical shared-use space connecting two academic wings — one for elementary students in kindergarten through fifth grades and the other for middle school students in sixth through eighth grades.
The shared-use space would be home to the school's cafeteria, library and innovation labs, including both food and fitness labs.
There also will be performing arts areas, including band, choral and dance studios.
Additionally, the shared-use space will be home to the school’s gymnasium, which also will have a stage and serve as an auditorium.
There will be bleachers that can extend across the gym floor when more seating is needed for a performance.
Between the school’s academic wings, there will be an outside courtyard for learning and fitness. There also will be a walking path with a multipurpose recreation field on the inside of the loop.
Additionally, the school site will have a synthetic turf, multi-sport athletic field that can be used for baseball, football and soccer.
Questions of safety, environmental assessment
School Director Zaleeae Sierra questioned whether safety had been factored into spaces in the school that would have floor-to-ceiling glass windows, specifically in the instance of an intruder to the building.
Steve Behrens, an architect on the project, said his team met with ASD’s security department and Allentown Police Department to review the design plans for safety.
“Each space gets its own look from that safety and security standpoint."Steve Behrens, architect from Breslin Architects
“Each space gets its own look from that safety and security standpoint,” Behrens said.
He also said design choices, such as installing bullet-proof glass, are not discussed publicly for safety reasons.
Bob Smith, a former school director and candidate to rejoin the board in the upcoming election, noted his environmental and traffic concerns about the project during the meeting's public comment section.
Smith, an East Side resident, said neighbors are worried about increased traffic in the area when the school opens.
He also questioned whether there were still trash dumping sites on the state hospital property that could have left cancer-causing materials in the soil.
The architect said the school’s portion of the property had no environmental safety concerns, as confirmed by an environmental assessment of the site.
The architect also said he would investigate whether such issues exist on other parts of the former state hospital property not owned by the district.
“We did extensive due diligence in this area," Jeffrey Sultanik, an attorney for the district, said in regard to the environmental concerns.
"I think it would behoove everybody to understand we want to dispel the notion that there are cancer-causing agents on this property and the like."
A 2020 report — "Reuse Feasibility Study for Allentown State Hospital" — detailed three unregulated landfills on a section of the state hospital property with cancer causing chemicals, referencing a 2009 assessment.
City Center bought the property in September 2022. Its environmental assessment of the site did not note that issue.
The state Department of General Services, which owned the property before City Center, spent $12.7 million to remediate the site before the sale.
