But it wasn't a wrecking ball that actually brought down the brick building. Instead, a couple of giant excavators and a little Bobcat tractor did a delicate piece of demolition work on Feb. 22 and 23. In the span of two days, the demolition crew had leveled the large room--reducing it to bricks and splinters--loaded the rubble into large trucks and had the site swept and ready for construction crews to come in and rebuild the theater to its new specs.

The PAC, as the theater was known on the Pioneer campus, was scorched on a Sunday night in November of 2003 when two teenagers, one a former Pioneer High School student, set a vending machine on fire. The blaze quickly jumped to a bulletin board, and soon the whole building was burning. The fire, which was quickly snuffed out by fire crews, rendered the building unfit for use. With the theater shuttered, the school's drama program was forced to hold its productions outside under a tent or in borrowed local church halls.

The adjoining rooms, the kitchen and the band room were not damaged by the fire and had been operational since the fire; they were not knocked down, and now thick sheets of plastic are sealing the rooms where the walls used to be.

When construction is completed, the new PAC, stage and seating area will be larger than the original, taking advantage of the 54-foot bump-out to the north. The center, which will still officially be called a multipurpose room, will borrow some of its features from other theaters in the area, as Pioneer drama director Steve Dini toured other schools' stages during the year, gathering ideas were incorporated into the design.

The $3 million cost of the PAC project will be funded by Measure F, a $429 million bond measure passed in March 2002 for completing the renovation of San Jose Unified schools, as well as from an insurance policy.