SUNBURY – After some delays, Shikellamy school district’s new middle school is almost complete. Architect Gary Wolfe, who oversaw the project, attended the school board meeting Thursday night to talk about the process of the project.
Wolfe said construction started a month late due to copious amounts of paperwork, “Seven days later a ‘Proceed’ is issued and construction begins. That didn’t happen until November 11, 2014 almost a month later due to large amounts of paper. November is a deadly month in construction because if you don’t get in the ground by Thanksgiving, you just don’t know what’s going to happen.
Even though work seemed impossible in the winter, Wolfe says construction continued, “I had registered days at 12 degrees, 16 degrees, 18 degrees, but the construction just really continued to progress. The crew went right through, doing what they could do.”
Wolfe explained how work continued through the year until the crew faced yet another winter, this time without a roof, causing damage to the interior of the school, “Now we’re in the winter again and we don’t have a roof enclosed. There we are basically fighting winter months again trying to get this roof enclosed and that really held up a lot of the interior finish.”
After almost two years, the project is almost complete. Wolfe said the crew is now finishing some odds and ends with plumbing and electrical work being completed by the end of the week. Shikellamy’s new middle school will be in use for the first day of the school year.
