Last Tuesday, the Northeast Community Propel Academy, a K-8 school with the capacity for 1,660 students, opened In Philadelphia. The 180,000-sf building was financed and constructed through a public-private partnership between the School District of Philadelphia and Gilbane Development Company, which provided turnkey development for the new school.
Gilbane Building Company acted as the project’s design-builder and hired Stantec as its architect. Gilbane was one of three firms that submitted bid proposals to the school district in the fall of 2017, and received the contract the following January, says Susan Tully, Senior Project Manager and Market Leader for Gilbane’s K-12 Center of Excellence. The school’s design was completed by October 2019, and after some municipal delays construction began in March 2020, “on the day the world stopped” because of the coronavirus pandemic, quipped Tully.
Propel Academy is in a multicultural section of Philadelphia that “is booming,” says Tully, with lots of service sector workers. But the number of school seats hadn’t kept pace with the community’s growth; Tully notes that another school there, built for 600 students, now serves 2,000. The district “knew they need to get a new school built quickly,” she recalls.
The school is on land that previously had served as baseball and softball fields. As part of the P3 agreement, Gilbane Development purchased the land from the school district for $1, and upon completion of construction on August 19, 2021 sold the property and school back to the school district for $79 million.
“Speed to market was a driver” for the P3 arrangement, says Luis Vildostegui, Stantec’s Senior Principal and Education Leader, whom BD+C interviewed with Jennifer Grafton, Stantec’s Project Manager and Senior Associate. Vildostegui notes that Propel Academy’s design reflects the school district’s gravitation toward a more socialized teaching model that focuses on learning with peers.
SCHOOL FEATURES COLLABORATIVE ZONES
Gilbane and Stantec, with Fengate Asset Management, were part of a construction financing consortium that in June broke ground on six K-12 schools in Prince George’s County, Md. This was the first P3 for schools in the nation, and it’s expected to cut in half the time it takes to complete those schools, which are scheduled to open in 2023.
In Philadelphia, the Propel Academy project “is one of the most collaborative I’ve worked on in my career,” says Tully. One of its advantages was Gilbane’s relationship with Stantec, which provided architecture, interior design, and civil engineering services. “We were able to advance the construction before the designs were completed, which fast-tracked the project,” says Grafton. And because Stantec had worked previously with the school district and Gilbane, “we could act as an intermediary” when decisions were made, says Vildostegui.
Stantec’s office in Philadelphia is right across the street from the school district’s, so it set up a big room where all of the project’s stakeholders could meet conveniently. “We were all there, resolving problems from the beginning,” says Vildostegui. Any additions or changes during the design or construction process had to be “cost-neutral solutions,” says Tully. (Nicole Ward, AIA, the school district’s design manager, was its liaison on this project.)
Those discussions included “challenging some basic assumptions,” says Vildostegui, like the building’s placement, which is adjacent to a park that exposures city kids to natural environments they might not see otherwise. During the permitting stage, the building team and school district also hashed out whether a retention basin on the site should be above or below ground (they ultimately chose the latter).
The building team’s early collaboration allowed its members to react quicker when there were materials shortages or delays. “We didn’t need to make compromises,” says Tully.
The Propel Academy was build on land that once served as ball fields, and is located near a tree-lined park.
A ‘SHINING SUCCESS STORY’ FOR P3s
Propel Academy is organized into clusters of classrooms and collaborative zones for small learning groups. There are six classrooms per grade for grades 1-5, and nine classrooms per grade for grades 6-8. The classrooms are positioned around shared media and tech commons within each grade level house, and the number of classrooms can be adjusted as needed.
The school also has science labs, music rooms, and “exploration” spaces, says Grafton. “It’s transformative,” says Vildostegui about the school’s design, that had to meet what Tully calls the school district’s “strict design standards” that are informed by LEED and WELL guidelines.
Tully sees Propel Academy as a “test case” for the school district, and believes P3 financial agreements will be more in vogue for financing school construction to meet clients’ demands for speed. “It’s a shining success story” for the P3 approach, adds Vildostegui. “It’s not for every project, but it’s quicker than a traditional design-bid-build because the issues get moved upfront.”
Related Stories
| Jun 12, 2014
Austrian university develops 'inflatable' concrete dome method
Constructing a concrete dome is a costly process, but this may change soon. A team from the Vienna University of Technology has developed a method that allows concrete domes to form with the use of air and steel cables instead of expensive, timber supporting structures.
| Jun 9, 2014
Green Building Initiative launches Green Globes for Sustainable Interiors program
The new program focuses exclusively on the sustainable design and construction of interior spaces in nonresidential buildings and can be pursued by both building owners and individual lessees of commercial spaces.
| May 29, 2014
7 cost-effective ways to make U.S. infrastructure more resilient
Moving critical elements to higher ground and designing for longer lifespans are just some of the ways cities and governments can make infrastructure more resilient to natural disasters and climate change, writes Richard Cavallaro, President of Skanska USA Civil.
| May 23, 2014
Top interior design trends: Gensler, HOK, FXFOWLE, Mancini Duffy weigh in
Tech-friendly furniture, “live walls,” sit-stand desks, and circadian lighting are among the emerging trends identified by leading interior designers.
| May 22, 2014
Big Data meets data centers – What the coming DCIM boom means to owners and Building Teams
The demand for sophisticated facility monitoring solutions has spurred a new market segment—data center infrastructure management (DCIM)—that is likely to impact the way data center projects are planned, designed, built, and operated.
| May 20, 2014
Kinetic Architecture: New book explores innovations in active façades
The book, co-authored by Arup's Russell Fortmeyer, illustrates the various ways architects, consultants, and engineers approach energy and comfort by manipulating air, water, and light through the layers of passive and active building envelope systems.
| May 19, 2014
What can architects learn from nature’s 3.8 billion years of experience?
In a new report, HOK and Biomimicry 3.8 partnered to study how lessons from the temperate broadleaf forest biome, which houses many of the world’s largest population centers, can inform the design of the built environment.
| May 15, 2014
'Virtually indestructible': Utah architect applies thin-shell dome concept for safer schools
At $94 a square foot and "virtually indestructible," some school districts in Utah are opting to build concrete dome schools in lieu of traditional structures.
| May 13, 2014
19 industry groups team to promote resilient planning and building materials
The industry associations, with more than 700,000 members generating almost $1 trillion in GDP, have issued a joint statement on resilience, pushing design and building solutions for disaster mitigation.
| May 11, 2014
Final call for entries: 2014 Giants 300 survey
BD+C's 2014 Giants 300 survey forms are due Wednesday, May 21. Survey results will be published in our July 2014 issue. The annual Giants 300 Report ranks the top AEC firms in commercial construction, by revenue.
