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City Beat
High school to begin new buildings this month
Presentation held events for ceremonal groundbreaking
By Kate Carter
After years of anticipation, students and staff at Presentation High School last week celebrated beginning work on a new arts complex they can expect to use by the middle of the next school year. Some neighbors, however, are worried that the new buildings could worsen traffic and parking congestion.
The all-girls Catholic school held two events to kick off construction on two new buildings and an outdoor amphitheater and gathering area.
Donors, alumni and parents were addressed by school leaders and entertained by the school's jazz choir and dance group at an April 5 evening event. The students were introduced to the construction and its state-of-the-art offerings in a Power Point presentation on April 6.
The school received its site development permit from the city on March 23, according to City Planner Anastazia Aziz, and will begin the process of applying for the building permits. Actual construction won't begin until later this month, school spokeswoman Diane Gatto said, and the buildings should be ready before the beginning of next year's second semester in January 2002.
The new development, located on the south side of the Plummer Avenue campus, includes an indoor 258-seat theater. Gatto said the theater is greatly desired by the students who have been forced to use the school's lunchroom for productions.
"We have a great theater arts program," she said. "We need a theater."
An outdoor amphitheater, will be cut out of lawn space and give the more than 700 students a place to gather and eat lunch, she said. It will be outside the basement of the new three-level classroom building.
The basement level will hold a multipurpose classroom, a computer graphics lab and a music room, complete with two practice rooms and a recording studio.
The ground floor level will contain an art classroom and a ceramics classroom with a kiln and dry storage areas. The second story will have two 990-square-foot multipurpose classrooms.
The project is costing the school about $7 million, Gatto said. The school is selling theater seats to donors, in an effort to raise the remaining $1 million it still needs, she said.
The school also plans to build an aquatics center with a pool and lockers for the school's swim and water polo teams, Gatto said, as well as to renovate the main buildings and add counseling space and a new heating and air-conditioning system.
Gatto said none of the construction will increase the student population. She said the new space will merely allow the school to offer its students enhanced curriculum and activities.
Presentation's residential neighbors have expressed concern about traffic and parking problems caused by the students. At a September community meeting, neighbors said they were worried the new construction would increase those problems.
The school was required to conduct a traffic study to see what impact its project would have on the parking and congestion in the surrounding neighborhood streets. Gatto said the study found there would be no increased traffic impact by the new buildings, because there will be no increase in student attendance. Aziz said the department of public works accepted the findings, and the planning department approved the permit.
Neighbor Linda Guerreiro said she isn't convinced the new construction won't increase traffic or that the school won't increase enrollment. The 18-year Plummer Avenue resident said the number of cars on her and nearby streets has been increasing in the past few years, especially after the school completed a new athletic facility and chapel in 1996.
Guerreiro said one of the biggest problems is the number of cars parked on the streets that sometimes obstruct driveways or prevent trash pickups.
Gatto said the school, with 70 staff members and about 713 students, is required to have 165 parking spaces on-site. When the next phase of construction is completed it will have 204 spots, she said--39 more than is required, and 16 more than it has now.
Gatto said the increased parking space and the current monitoring the school does of their students' cars should help the parking situation.
But Guerreiro said nothing has really changed since the fall community meeting. In fact, she said things have deteriorated, as more students have gotten drivers' licenses and started bringing their cars to school.
"It has only gotten worse as the year has progressed," she said. "Girls nowadays, everyone wants to drive SUVs. Even if they are legally parked, you can't see around or through them. It's really hard to get out of your driveway."
Guerreiro said things could improve if there was better monitoring of the drop-off and pick-up in front of school. She acknowledged that Presentation does a good job getting students to move inappropriately parked cars.
Gatto said the school makes announcements "every day," and if cars aren't moved within 15 minutes of an announcement, the school has them towed.
Guerreiro said the neighbors would probably see how things go with the construction before raising more complaints. And she said she hoped they would do a lot of construction during the summer when school is out and there are fewer cars and less traffic.
"When there's no school, the street's wonderful," she said.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
