A pile of rubble is all that remains of the Malibu Middle School building.
On Wednesday, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District orchestrated a demolition of the building, also referred to as “Building E,” in an effort to raze the 51-year-old structure, which will be replaced with a modern, module-style building as early as fall 2018. Originally, the middle school building was slated for upgrades, but a combination of factors came together to convince the district to replace rather than remodel the old building.
Funds for the remodel were to come from Measure BB, a $268 million bond passed in 2006, with additional projects planned with 2012’s $385 million Measure ES. Factors, including the discovery of toxic PCBs at the Malibu High School campus, slowed the process.
“We planned to do a modernization and that was what was included in the original design of this building — that was going to take it from a 10 classroom building to a 12 classroom building, but that did not include the modernization of windows and doors, that needed to be modernized,” SMMUSD Chief Operations Officer Cary Upton explained in a phone interview with The Malibu Times. Upton cited other buildings on the Malibu High School campus that had updated windows and doors.
“The cost to renovate, modernize that building and update it with new windows and doors ended up being very, very close to the cost to replace it with a GrowthPoint modular building,” Upton said. “We looked at other modular buildings, and we also looked at doing a stick-built design and … Both in time and money, the one that was the best choice was the GrowthPoint.”
Jennifer deNicola, president and founder of America Unites For Kids — founded as Malibu Unites as a rallying group for parents to fight for PCB removal at Malibu High School — said the demolition of the middle school building was also an important symbol.
“It’s a huge step in the right direction,” deNicola said. “That is what the teachers wanted, what we asked for.”
DeNicola cited Caren Leib, a member of the Facilities District Advisory Committee, as a driving force toward making the middle school demolition happen, after a group of parents and community members came up with the idea of a modular GrowthPoint structure in 2014.
“A great group of people worked on these plans, and then Caren Leib led the committee and really showed them that this was more cost effective by tearing the building down and putting in this than to remediate and keeping what they had,” deNicola described.
According to Upton, the new middle school building will replace the single-story Building E with a two-story modular building, “six classrooms on top of six classrooms that all face the quad.”
Press releases from the school district describe the building as “better suited to classroom space needed for 21st century learning, access, and campus space and flow.”
