The building is being re-developed by Powers and Associates with the help of expected funding from both the City of Harrisburg and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. HACC, Central Pennsylvania's Community College, has signed the 15 year lease and will be the sole tenant of the building. The college will move a number of programs into the new facility in the fall of 2007.
"We're still finalizing the funding for the project," said developer Tom Powers, "but we needed to get started on the project now in order to meet HACC's needs.
"We've gotten the strongest possible support from Mayor Reed as well as from State Senator Jeffrey Piccola and State Representative Ron Buxton," he said. "And we have received very strong support from the Rendell Administration and the Dauphin County Commissioners.
"As a result, even though the work on the funding isn't finalized, we're confident enough to get started," Powers said, "and we've got a lot to get done in a very short time frame."
First step, according to Powers, is tearing out all of the old partitions and fixtures added by years of occupation by a variety of tenants.
"The building itself is in great shape," Powers said. "Since it was built to house heavy presses and equipment, the basic building is solid as a rock. We just need to bring it up to speed to handle its new role as home to college classes and programs."
Those programs, according to HACC President Edna V. Baehre, PhD, will include a wide range of industrial technology programs as well as the college's growing building trades offerings.
"We looked carefully at programs which can benefit from co-location and in working with the respective faculty of those areas we found some great synergies," she said. "For instance, the expansion will house our architecture as well as our engineering and construction programs."
A number of programs are currently offered at the Harrisburg Campus, she said, but others will be new to the college.
"There is a growing need for training for skilled craftsmen," Baehre said, "and we didn't have space to add programs like masonry and plumbing. This new building gives us the chance to meet that growing community need and continue to grow the college."
The 130 thousand square foot building will add seventeen new classrooms to the college along with specialized labs, computer labs, faculty offices and support services including a branch library and learning support center.
The mid-town location will be joined to HACC's existing Community Center for Technolgy and the Arts (CCTA) by a special common area or "urban meadow." The meadow will also serve as a living ecological laboratory for the architectural and landscape design students.
Work will begin within the next two weeks on the project with classes scheduled in the building for the fall semester of next year.