A 60-Year-Old Building. A Multi-Year Transformation. A Community Brought Into the Story.

Pleasant Valley High School was built in 1959. The flagship building of the district was loved, but heavily used. When students weren't in the halls, the building looked tired. Core systems—electrical, mechanical, and plumbing—had not been meaningfully updated in over 60 years. Coal burners were still in operation when the project started.

The district faced a massive challenge. They opted for a phased, multi-year renovation rather than a full replacement. But how do you communicate a project of this scale to a community that will be funding it, living with the construction, and waiting years for the final result?

Waiting until the end of a multi-year project to release a single video is a missed opportunity. We built a strategy around an ongoing milestone documentary series.

The plan includes a main renovation documentary that will serve as the final film, supported by a series of milestone videos released after each major phase is completed. This format keeps stakeholders engaged. Parents and community members can't attend every board meeting, but chapter-by-chapter video updates give them a way to stay connected to their investment.

This production serves two masters. For Pleasant Valley School District, it is a vital community communication tool. For CHA, the engineering and project management firm leading the renovation, it is a high-end business development asset showcasing their capability to manage massive logistical challenges.

The logistics alone tell a story of professionalism. There were more than two years of design, engineering, and township approvals before ground broke. Construction had to be phased around an active school of hundreds of students. Working summers. Moving teachers between rooms. One production captures it all, delivering compounding value for both clients.

The first completed space in the multi-year project was Bear Academy—PVSD's modernized library and learning commons.

Before the renovation, staff were sharing rooms and spread across the building. The new space provided dedicated collaboration areas, a flex area for recording mini-lessons, and specific functions tailored to the academy. As one student noted during construction: "A lot of our furniture and walls were outdated. At the same time, it's comforting knowing the issues are being dealt with."

The impact on morale was immediate. As a CHA engineer stated on camera, "There's a very noticeable joy and happiness when you see kids using a space that was renovated."

The second chapter of the PVSD renovation series goes where the cameras rarely do — into the mechanical rooms, above the ceilings, and inside the walls that hold this 60-year-old building together.

Before the renovation, Pleasant Valley High School was running on infrastructure that hadn't been significantly updated since it was built in 1959. Coal burners still heating classrooms. Original 1960 switchgear described by the district's own maintenance supervisor as "hanging on by a thread." Half the building — including the cafeteria where every student ate lunch every day — had no air conditioning at all. As one faculty member described the building before renovation began: "When the students weren't here, it looked like a tired building."

Randy Smale, PVSD's Director of Operations and a 1985 graduate of the school, spent years keeping those systems running through daily improvisation, custom-fabricated parts, and 2am emergency calls. CHA Owner's Representative Ashley Puglese frames the engineering reality: the new floors, lighting, and ceilings that people notice represent roughly 25% of the total labor hours. The other 75% is happening behind the walls, above the ceilings, and inside mechanical rooms most students will never see.

This summer, that invisible work comes to life — new boilers, chillers, switchgear, transformer, and a complete new power service going live before students return in the fall.

As Randy put it on camera: "You are not going to see 75% of this stuff. But you will feel it. No more hot rooms. No more cold rooms. No more drafts. It's going to be a comfortable place to learn and work."