Thursday morning was supposed to be a big moment for Harvest Preparatory Academy’s new San Luis campus: the arrival of the project’s first structural steel.
Harvest invited media to the future campus site at 20th Avenue and San Fernando Street.
But that morning, the lot sat empty.
Harvest was still waiting on a permit, so the delivery was moved to the current campus, where structural steel beams were being unloaded.
“The dirt will be moving pretty soon now,” said Evelyn Mejia, executive assistant to HPA’s executive director. “We're expecting our permits today for the grading and all of the groundwork and so what's happening today is that the metal buildings are being delivered here at our current site to make room for the grading at our construction site.”
It was roughly 8:30 a.m. when she explained Harvest was expecting to receive its permits that day. At 4 p.m., KAWC reached out to executive director Debi Ybarra for an update.
She attributed the delay to the contractor not yet having a San Luis business license.
But the school broke ground more than a year ago, so what happened?
Harvest first announced plans for the new San Luis campus in summer 2023. The Yuma Sun reported it would accommodate 3,700 K-12 students with a tentative 2024-2025 start date.
About a year and a half later, Harvest held a groundbreaking ceremony. This time, Harvest reported that the campus would support 2,500 K-12 students and be open for the 2026-2027 school year.
Another year later, Harvest held a public meeting update, explaining that they’ve been tied up in pre-construction and permitting work, but they’re expecting to open in January 2027.
That January opening, however, will not be for the full K-12 campus Harvest originally announced.
School officials now describe it as the first phase of the project, serving students from transitional kindergarten through eighth grade.
Ybarra told KAWC that Harvest is still considering a high school, but that part of the plan is less certain.“We are looking at that,” she said. “High schools are expensive, and so you have to have the right number of students.”
At the May update meeting, construction project manager David Garrison shared a few of the hurdles they’ve had to clear. “First off, it takes months and months just to get the soils reports and the geology and is there a spotted lizard running across the property?” he said. “And that’s not a joke. There’s a lot of reports that have to be done just to let us build.
“The other thing we got hit with is down at the intersection at E right by the hospital, they weren’t going to issue us a permit until we agreed to pay a portion of a traffic light, which is $143,000 that they claim that we're 53% of the traffic.”
Garrison assured the public that work is underway even when it’s not visible, and Mejia echoed this at the steel beam delivery when asked how difficult meeting the January opening date will be.
“We are talking every day. ‘What do you need? Is this done? Has this been reviewed?’” she said. “So we’re working day and night to make sure that we meet these deadlines.”
The new campus has a $30 million price tag, which Ybarra said Harvest is paying for with its general funds and construction loans from a bank.
Its first phase will double the current campus’ capacity, taking it from 600 to 1,200. After the second phase, that number will climb up to 2,500.
This is meant to track with San Luis’ growth. Ybarra said they chose to pursue a new campus to provide more opportunities for the city’s rising population.
“It's really growing out here — Comité de Bien Estar, Riedel Construction…” she said. “And there are big things that are going on out here — lots of homes, especially right around where we're building and that they're slated for, I want to say, it was 1,500 east of Avenue E that are slated out there. So it's a growing area.”
For people connected to Harvest, Thursday’s delivery was meaningful because the campus has been years in the making.
And although complicated by pending permits, it marked the first visible step forward. That was special for folks like Gerardo Juarez.
Juarez, a contractor overseeing Harvest’s San Luis facilities, has worked there for eight years. His investment in the school is personal — he began as a volunteer and saw both of his children attend Harvest.
“For me, it’s a privilege to see all of this that’s happening here at Harvest Prep,” he said in Spanish. “I have eight years here and it brings me joy that we’re going to start the new school. Everyone’s waiting for this.”
In a request for comment about the latest permit delay, Ybarra said Friday, “It should be resolved by Monday.”
But for now, those beams are still at Harvest’s current campus — not the empty lot where the new school is supposed to rise.
