A cherished piece of Camp Tuckahoe’s legacy is being reborn as the council’s new service center, with work progressing on transforming the historic dining hall into a hub for Scouting operations in the New Birth of Freedom Council.
Work began on the building’s exterior as soon as the summer camp season ended in mid-August, and significant progress has been made. We are staging the work in different phases, with Phase I focusing on the exterior. This includes removing and rebuilding the old porch, installing new windows and doors, and installing new siding and a new roof. Our goal in Phase I was to create a weather-tight building envelope before the arrival of winter weather. Phase I work will be completed in the next couple of weeks.
Our next priority will be to waterproof the lower level of the building and install drainage systems to move water away from it. This section of the camp property receives significant runoff from nearby higher ground. The Executive Committee has approved moving ahead with this scope of work once Phase I is complete.
The timing of further work on the new service center is a bit uncertain as we await word on a significant grant proposal to help fund the building’s renovations. We continue to make progress toward completing the sale of 906 acres at Tuckahoe to the Central Pennsylvania Conservancy, and we anticipate the sale will be completed by the end of the year. If we succeed in both of these efforts, these are two critical pieces in our plans to fund the new service center work fully and complete the repayment of the remaining balance still due on the $1.5 million loan taken out to make our council’s contribution to the resolution of the BSA’s bankruptcy.
I’d like to thank Alexander Building Construction, our general contractor for the new service center and each of their subcontractors for their efforts. A great deal of progress has been made in the past two months, and I’m looking forward to continuing our work to transform Tuckahoe’s original dining hall into our council’s new headquarters. I’ll share a few recent photos below to give you a sense of the work completed so far. I’ll continue to provide updates in the future.
Yours in Scouting,
Ron Gardner
Scout Executive & CEO
