SPHS Will Update Its Campus

Historic San Pedro High School is working on a $245 million remodeling project that will add three new buildings and update five existing ones, adding 34 new classrooms in the process.

“San Pedro High School is going to maintain its historic status, and all the things that make it a great school for decades, while also modernizing certain elements,” said Principal Steve Gebhart at a construction update community meeting on April 28.

The project began in 2015, passing through environmental studies and earning state approvals, including an environmental impact report. The Board of Education finally approved the $245 million budget on April 14, and construction was approved to begin on May 10. Representatives from the Los Angeles Unified School District said the contractor has begun mobilizing on the site. The work is scheduled to be completed in 2027. 

The school will build three new buildings, representatives from LAUSD said. One building will include administration, food services and general classrooms, as well as a cafeteria with indoor and outdoor student dining. It will also have specialty classrooms, including digital imaging, culinary arts and engineering, and four science labs. In addition, it will provide a new main entrance to the campus on Leland Street. The second building will be a single-story band and visual media building with a flexible video or broadcast classroom. The third will be a small central plant building for the boilers and chillers, which will provide hot and chilled water to the campus for heating and air-conditioning.

“They are within the confines of the historic structure, but internally the rooms will be just as fabulous as the brand-new buildings,” said Dean Taylor, senior project development manger.

The school will also upgrade and restore the historic library, which is on the second floor of the main building.

The project will not extend beyond the current campus boundaries, and will only use its existing land. It should take about six years.

“It’s a very complex project,” Taylor said. “Not only complex in the way that the buildings are put together — they’re all cast-in-place concrete buildings — but also the topography of the site is very challenging.”

The reason it is challenging is because the school is sloped about 60 feet from its high point on Leland and 17th streets to its lowest point, on the northeast corner of the campus. This makes construction and accessibility difficult — they have to be careful where they place buildings, ramps, paving, retaining walls and parking.

The reason the school is using cast-in-place concrete buildings is so that they fit in with the existing buildings, LAUSD representatives said. The buildings that were built in the 1930s were made using the same method. It involves using the concrete itself for both the structure and visible finish. Molds made of wood or metal are created, and then the concrete is poured into them. 

The school is going to demolish several buildings, including its shop building, industrial arts building and four portable buildings. It will also remove 112 trees on the campus, but will replace them with 148 new trees.

Taylor said that the new buildings integrate well with the existing buildings. They have the same color scheme, and a similar design.

“The new buildings are really quite understated, and not trying to compete with the historic buildings elsewhere on campus,” Taylor said.

Ed Cadena, senior project manager, said the construction would affect most of the campus. The only exceptions would be the baseball field and the football field.

“The fact that this is such a comprehensive construction development of the high school, it obligates us to do some significant phasing of the work, and to introduce some temporary classrooms,” Cadena said.

In the first phase, which will last from 2021 to 2023, three new buildings will be constructed, including the new admin building, classroom space, a new lunch shelter and the central plant. During this phase, the construction crew will also install some utilities from the existing campus into the new buildings, including water and electricity.

While the construction crew will not be changing the baseball field, it will be using it as a construction staging area. It will be used for setting up offices, staff parking and mockups. While it’s being used, the school’s softball program will be relocated to the satellite campus, the Olguin Annex to San Pedro High, which is about 1.5 miles away. The school’s baseball program will remain at the main campus.

During this phase, the school will also use the north parking lot for interim housing.

“If you walk to the campus recently over the last couple of months, you’ve seen some activity out there,” Cadena said. “We have brought on board some interim housing, or temporary classrooms, so that we can initiate this first phase of construction.”

The second phase of the project will overlap the first, taking place from 2023 to 2025. The classroom building referred to as the “Old English building” will be remodeled in this stage, and the auditorium and small gymnasium will have their barriers removed.

In 2024, the science building will be remodeled, including conversion of some existing classrooms, upgrading of some bathrooms and connecting it to the central plant to give it a dependable air conditioning system.

In 2025, the school will update the larger gymnasium, including a seismic upgrade, resurfacing and bringing air conditioning to the main court.

“We very much expect that it will be traditional hours, ending somewhere between perhaps 2:30 to 3:30, depending on how long the day really needs to be to get work done, sometimes in anticipation of something starting the next day,” Cadena said.

“In consideration of this project, there’s a lot of things that we looked at and put into play to safely develop this site with consideration for the educational environment and the community,” Cadena said.

These considerations include an 8-foot-high chain link fence around the construction site, as well as a sound blanket to muffle the noise. In addition, all the contractor’s employees will be cleared by the Department of Justice. 

Representatives of LAUSD said they expect construction to continue with a fully functioning campus with maximum enrollment throughout the school year.