Abandoned William Penn School in Harrisburg

Harrisburg School District cannot continue to avoid the issue of the abandoned and deteriorating William Penn High School, the district’s administration told the school board Tuesday night, expressing the need to “open a dialogue” about the property’s ultimate fate.

While the district has not made any definitive plans to deal with the building – be that selling it, restoring it, tearing it down, or some combination thereof – it will need to settle on some direction before the year’s end, the district’s court-appointed receiver, Lori Suski, advised the school board at Tuesday’s meeting.

“I think we’re at the point where we can’t just continue to just keep doing what we’re doing,” Suski said Tuesday. “I think we all recognize that the building was not properly handled years ago when it was vacated, and that’s led to the situation we’re currently in, but we’re now in a situation where we have to address the issue.

The William Penn school building, located on the north side of Division Street, just east of Italian Lake, has been abandoned for over a decade. On Tuesday, Harrisburg schools’ superintendent Eric Turman painted a difficult picture of what that now looks like, both practically and financially.

The 250,000 square foot building is the subject of constant vandalism and break-ins by thrill seekers. Local youths were even spotted on the roof of the decaying structure a few weeks ago, raising even more safety concerns, Turman said.

“You board a window, another one’s broken into. You board that window, another one is broken into,” Turman said.

Copper pipes and wiring have been stripped out by intruders, and multiple fires – three since 2019 – have caused considerable damage. The interior of the building was hastily abandoned by the district and is strewn with various odds and ends.

“When you do walk inside the building, there are skids of books with the wrapping still on them,” Turman said. “It just became a dumping ground when they had extra materials.”

The district’s main insurance carrier dropped the building from its policy, forcing the district to spend $89,000 per year to insure William Penn separately with a half-million dollar deductible, Turman said. The district also spends $49,000 per year in overtime to security staff to deal with the property’s issues.

William Penn High School was built in 1926 as a companion school to John Harris High School, which still operates as the district’s primary high school campus. William Penn’s zenith was described in a 2020 profile in TheBurg as being in the 1950s, before suburbanization began to take a toll on enrollment.

William Penn’s population was transferred to John Harris in 1972, according to city historical markers, and the facility converted into a technical academy before fully closing in the 2010-2011 school year, the Patriot-News reported at the time. It was one of several Harrisburg school facilities to shutter in the wake of the global financial meltdown that dealt a particular blow to Harrisburg’s already-struggling schools.

Board member Ellis Roy graduated from William Penn in 1971, and “that school was having problems then not being properly maintained,” he said Tuesday.

The building itself sits on grounds that cover nearly 20 acres, with another 7-8 acres occupied by a track and athletic fields, according to Chris Celmer, the district’s former acting superintendent and consultant to Suski. The fields are still used by Camp Curtin middle school, which abuts the William Penn property to the east.

The property has been advertised for sale under prior administrations, and the district has received proposals, including a well-publicized offer from the nonprofit Capital Rebirth to buy the property for $3.5 million, with plans to turn it into a trade school and community resource center.

That offer and others were ultimately put on hold by the district late last year, Celmer said, citing concerns about the financial feasibility of some renovation proposals and the ultimate question of whether the district should be selling its last remaining large chunk of open land.

“Last October, when we discussed different offers, I think we all determined between the administration and the board, that it wasn’t in the best interest [of the district] to sell the building and the land,” Celmer said.

Even if the district retains the land, the fate of the building presents a problem. Turman said he had received estimates of $4 to $6 million to tear the structure down, and between $80 and $90 million to fully renovate it.

This will be difficult in the short term, barring some financial windfall. The debt-laden district has restructured its borrowing to have a level debt service out through 2035, according to district Business Administrator Marcia Stokes; issuing new debt prior to that would put the district in the precarious position of making interest payments only.

“Whatever decision is made, it’s not something that we would be able to do in the immediate future,” Suski advised the board.

While the district is currently planning to renovate and re-open Steele Elementary School using federal stimulus funds, the district needs more elementary school space – on the other hand, there is no demand for more high school space, leading to question of what the district would use a renovated William Penn building for, even if it could afford it.

Several board members queried what intermediate options the district might have. Board member Danielle Robinson asked if the district had a cost or consideration to clean out the building in order to property mothball it, even if re-use was many years off. Board President Brian Carter questioned what costs would be for only a partial re-use, noting that the district’s downtown SciTech campus needs gym space.

Board member James Thompson also said that the parcel is not unreasonably large as an expansion space for Camp Curtin, describing it as an opportunity to build the “middle school of the future” and that the district should not give up by selling the land, even if such a use is many years away.

“You’re kind of spot on with the vision of what all that could be,” agreed Turman, who has previously floated the idea of using the William Penn property as a magnet middle school.

But even under such scenarios, Roy said, it will almost certainly be cheaper to tear William Penn down and build new facilities; the immediate concern is that the building has reached an “emergency state” where it’s a major physical hazard.

Suski agreed that the district will have to have some sort of near-term solution, given that “we cannot continue to just kick the can down the road.”

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