Saratoga News

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All's quiet on the north campus renovation front, but not for long

By Shannon Burkey

It has been a little more than two months since the Saratoga City Council voted to allocate $500,000 to the renovation of the North Campus, and still the campus sits quietly with no work begun.

According to Assistant City Manager Barbara Powell, the process is moving right along and could begin soon.

"Behind the scenes we are moving forward, with good progress on what we need to do to get things under way," Powell said. "There is just nothing visual yet."

Powell said the city is looking to see what can be accomplished with the amount of money allocated by the council before it begins any renovation.

When the council approved the funding, it discussed major work being done on both the administration building and fellowship hall to allow for an increased use of both buildings. This would include the installation of wood flooring and acoustic enhancements in the fellowship hall, and the education building would be converted to a dry storage area and would provide minimal on-site staffing.

The council also discussed installation of new appliances in the kitchen, an electrical system upgrade for the entire campus, landscape maintenance and restoration of the picnic areas.

The former Grace United Methodist Church property was purchased by the city in 2002 for $4.5 million for community use and as a possible new location for the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department. But as the economy took a turn for the worse and the cost to bring the building up to code was underestimated, the city council voted 3-2 to sell the building four years after its purchase.

The city then struck a $7 million deal to sell the 2.6-acre property to residential developer Mike Masoumi, and the building's zoning status was changed from a public facility to a single-family residential district.

However, the sale of the property met with enormous opposition from the community, which wanted Saratoga residents to have use of the property. The decision on whether to sell was put to the voters through Measure J on the June 6 ballot. Nearly 75 percent wanted to keep the property, and it was taken off the market.

According to Powell, renovations will begin soon on the administration building and fellowship hall. She said she anticipates work beginning on the administration building in next few months.

"No structural changes need to be made to that building, so we should be able to begin working on it soon," Powell said, "but the fellowship hall is a more complicated structure because of the way it is built."

However, Powell said she thinks work on the fellowship hall will begin not long after the administration building.

At the Sept. 27 planning commission meeting, commissioners voted unanimously to approve a General Plan Amendment that would return the property from its single-family residential district status to its previous public-facilities status.

"Tonight we are basically just reversing the process back from a residential to a public facility," said Community Development Director John Livingstone.

According to Powell, the reversal is merely procedural and has no bearing on when the renovations will begin.