Harvest Preparatory Academy steel arrives as San Luis campus awaits permit

Harvest Preparatory Academy’s first structural steel reached San Luis on June 19, but not the vacant lot at 20th Avenue and San Fernando Street that parents have been watching for nearly three years. The beams were unloaded instead at the school’s current campus, a visible sign of progress that still underscored how much of the project’s schedule depends on permits, licenses and city approvals.

The delay came even as Harvest expected permits that day for grading and groundwork. Evelyn Mejia, an executive assistant to the executive director, said the school was expecting that paperwork so dirt work could start soon. Later, executive director Debi Ybarra said the holdup was tied to the contractor not yet having a San Luis business license.

That detail matters because the city’s licensing process does not stop at a single office. San Luis guidance says business licenses are reviewed by multiple departments before approval, and businesses also must move through zoning, permits, inspections and registration steps. In other words, the timing of the campus opening is still partly controlled by city review, not just by Harvest’s construction schedule.

The steel delivery itself showed how constrained the school’s current setup remains. The beams came from Mexico and were unloaded at the parking lot next to Riedel Plaza, where Harvest rents space for kindergarten classrooms. The school’s current San Luis campus, listed by the Arizona Department of Education at 1044 N. 10th Avenue, serves kindergarten through eighth grade, holds a B grade for the 2024-2025 school year and includes a secure campus, a preschool on the same property line and a full-time security guard.

Harvest first announced the San Luis campus in summer 2023, and the project has shifted several times since then. Early plans described a campus for 3,700 K-12 students with a tentative 2024-25 opening. Later descriptions scaled that to 2,500 K-12 students and pushed the target to the 2026-27 school year. By June 6, Harvest was telling the community to expect a January 2027 opening for the $30 million campus, with phase one to include classroom and administration space.

David Garrison, the project manager, said months of soils and geology reports were needed before construction could move ahead. He also said the city wanted Harvest to contribute $143,000 toward a traffic light near the hospital before issuing a permit. Harvest said prefabricated buildings were already under construction and were expected to arrive June 17.

For families in south Yuma County, the steel delivery was a milestone, but not the finish line. The campus can still open only after the remaining permits, licenses and infrastructure obligations clear, and those pieces still define the pace of the project.