Homestead Wakefield School Moves Ahead With MacPhail Road Requirement

BEL AIR, MD — Plans for a replacement school at Homestead Wakefield Elementary will move forward, but Harford County Public Schools must ensure public right of way is granted so MacPhail Road can extend. That was one of several stipulations the Bel Air Planning Commission issued in approving the site plan at its meeting Thursday night at Town Hall.

The 1,100-student replacement school will be ready to open for the 2024-2025 school year, according to Missy Valentino, facilities planner for Harford County Public Schools. Multipurpose fields are also part of the project.

“This site’s been on our radar for a while,” Valentino told the planning commission. A scope study was done in 2007 finding that the buildings were diminishing, the school lacked space for educational needs and there were "safety and security concerns," as well as the challenge of a 40-foot elevation change between parts of the campus, Valentino said.

Due to funding constraints, the project was deferred until a new scope study was conducted from 2019 to 2020 as part of the balancing enrollment process. At first, school officials thought the John Archer School would be located on the Homestead site, but it will be in a new facility on Schucks Road instead.

"This is now a top priority," Valentino said of replacing Homestead Wakefield, which is over capacity and spans three one-story buildings.

Replacing the school with a two-story building is slated to cost $82 million.

Construction documents for the project were approved by the state on March 23, and bids are set to open on April 21, according to Valentino. She said the school system was coordinating with the Maryland Stadium Authority regarding the ball fields and has already gotten local funding from Harford County.

"Harford County Public Schools cannot make cannot make [a] commitment that is dependent on the actions of multiple stakeholders," Valentino said of the commission's request to grant right of way for MacPhail Road. The superintendent would need to recommend that MacPhail Road was no longer needed; then the school board would have to approve putting it in surplus; the property would be turned over to the state; then it could be transferred to Harford County government, which would negotiate with the town.

Cases involving multiple stakeholders had come to the planning board before, such as developers handling the Harford Mall and Sears area, according to Bel Air's Senior Town Planner Rowan Glidden. In that case, the mall and the developer had signed documents before appearing in front of the planning commission last spring.

The school is in phase one of its construction project. Fields are being graded, and officials said they were preparing the Wakefield building for demolition.

Wakefield was built in 1958, and Homestead appears to have been constructed in 1966, according to Glidden. There is also a kindergarten building associated with Homestead, Glidden said.

All three buildings will be demolished to make way for a new school spanning more than 100,000 square feet, based on the current plan.

The Bel Air Planning Commission's role is to enforce the town's comprehensive plan, which guides development. Extending MacPhail Road has been on the town's comprehensive plan since 1959, Glidden told Patch.

In spite of the town's desire to have MacPhail Road become a public right of way, Harford County Public Schools did not include this in the proposal.

Several conditions complicated the right of way, including 10 BGE utility poles “that could be impacted by a connector road going through the site as well as a 16-inch water main,” Project Engineer Peter Soprano told the Bel Air Planning Commission.

Here are some of the amenities of the school that Soprano outlined:

• Courtyard
• Outdoor classroom fitted with mounds for an outdoor learning environment
• Park trail that goes around the campus
• 247 parking spaces

Planning Commission Chair Lois Kelly and Commissioner Keith Powell voted against approving the site plan for Homestead Wakefield.

“I’ve been on this board for 30 years, and it predates my participation in this group,” Powell said of the town’s desire to connect MacPhail Road. “Nothing in your plan deals with that.”

Kelly said the school system was “putting the cart before the horse” by coming to the commission Thursday night without having incorporated the MacPhail Road connection into its site plan.

The vote to approve the plan was 3-2.

The landscape plan passed as well. An art amenity for all nonresidential development greater than 100,000 square feet is required, according to the town of Bel Air. The art amenity at the Homestead Wakefield replacement school will be $10,000 and must be approved by the Bel Air Cultural Arts Commission.

This article may be updated.