Parkway West presents plan to buy PTC campus as remedy for overcrowding; Mount Lebanon raises cost concerns

Parkway West Executive Director Darby Copeland told the Mount Lebanon Board of School Directors on Oct. 13 that the joint operating committee (JOC) is pursuing the recently closed Pittsburgh Technical College (PTC) campus as the most economical way to add square footage and program capacity to Parkway West Career & Technical Center.

Copeland said the JOC—s facility study produced two options for Parkway—s own campus (one large and one pared back), but that when PTC closed and entered receivership the committee asked architects to compare renovating the current campus with buying and minimally renovating the PTC site. "We purchased a sales agreement to simply take that off the market. It gave us a 240 day runway," Copeland said, describing a negotiated purchase price for the campus itself reduced to about $12.2 million from an initial asking price near $20 million.

The JOC—s architects offered two PTC scenarios: a full renovation option that Copeland said would total about $59 million, and a smaller programmatic/infrastructure option estimated at roughly $47 million. Copeland presented…