Construction nears completion
By Bret Bradigan

Come the conclusion of their winter break Jan. 6, Nordhoff students will return to what is, essentially, a brand-new, $6.2 million, 30,000 square-foot school.

Gone are the low-rise blocks of crumbling concrete. In their place have risen four new buildings, including two buildings for science classrooms and laboratories; a music building with practice rooms, band room and a hardwood dance floor; and a triangular-shaped administ-ration building.

Gone also will be most of the construction disruption, with the 40-acre school site ribboned with construction fence and furrowed with utility trenches. Most, but not all.

This project comes courtesy of the largesse of state, and local, voters, through Proposition 47 bonds, and from the fall 1997 election, who, by 71.8 percent of the 4,000 votes cast, passed the $15 million general obligation bonds. With matching funds, a new facilities and modernization construction stockpile of nearly $30 million has been accumulated by the Ojai Unified School District.

Designed by an architectural firm from Orange County, which specializes in school projects, the style, which incorporates natural light, reflective surfaces and yields to its environment more than previous buildings, from the late 1950s, "is what I call progressive Spanish," said Jim Berube, Ojai Unified School District Assistant Superintendent. "It fits better with the town, but has a little more of a future look."

Lundgren Management Corporation is managing the project, which began about a year ago, and is expected to conclude by mid-January, with the new locker room. The administrators, including counselors and the on-campus police officer, will move into their new building during the winter break, which begins Dec. 19.

While the enrollment at Nordhoff High School, presently 1,250 students, is expected to decline, the need for renovating the old buildings has only accelerated, said Don Holmquist, Lundgren's on-site project manager. He noted that few schools of Nordhoff's size have administration crammed into classroom buildings, and entirely lack an auditorium. Nordhoff's highly regarded music department also lacked its own facilities. "They've been making do for 25 years without the advantages that other schools have," he said.

The old buildings will still be put to good use, with plans to convert them into a student center and vocational educational counseling.
Construction has proceeded in fits and starts, though the opening date is still on track, he said. "We have had a lot of challenges with the weather with running utilities to the buildings, and they (subcontractors) have dealt with them admirably," Holmquist said, adding that most of the changes from the original plans "were value added," such as skylights and paving, rather than underestimated costs.

The paving project, Berube said, has completely redesigned the hard-to-navigate parking lot at Nordhoff, in which drivers often have to exit back on to Maricopa Highway to return to the school parking lot, adding more spaces and a more logical flow.

And that is only part of it. Berube said the district "has work we're doing two years out."

Some of that work has already begun. The gym has a newly polished floor and new, automated bleachers. The locker rooms are expected to be complete mid-January. The baseball field will have new dugouts, concessions booths, electronic signs, and an area for discus and shotput field events. Ojai Community Stadium will have new lights, a nine-track all-weather track, and 500 new seats added to the 1,500 already in place on the home side, and 1,000 seats on the visitor side, for 3,000 total seats.

Those playing field improvements will partly take place under the auspices of the biggest project on the docket, the $2.1 million joint effort with the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy to solve chronic drainage problems at Nordhoff's playing fields by raising and tilting them toward the Ojai Meadows Preserve. To raise those fields the required 18 inches will take 100,000 cubic-feet of fill. The Ojai Valley News will examine that project in the Nov. 28 issues.

These projects, particularly the new construction, came out of a needs assessment done in 1997 that led to the bond issue.

© 2003 The Ojai Valley News

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