Campus will undergo 12 modernization projects worth $16.9
million
Morgan Hill – Live Oak High School students are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, as renovation work on their 30-year-old campus accelerates.
Al Solis, director of construction and modernization for the district, told Morgan Hill Unified School District trustees a proposed timeline and budget for the 12 projects has been created.
A total of $16.9 million is available for the second phase of the school’s renovation. Funding comes from several sources, including state funds, he said.
Several of the projects to refurbish the district’s oldest high school have been completed or are already underway, Solis told trustees Tuesday night during their regular meeting. Several were completed before students returned to school at the end of August.
“We’ve done some small things that the students can see, like the trash cans, the barbecue pit and the parking lot,” noted MHUSD Superintendent Alan Nishino.
Underway, but not completed, are the interior modernization of building 600, a video surveillance upgrade and campus-wide technology upgrades.
The two biggest projects during this part of the modernization effort are the boys locker room and the Little Theater auditorium.
Solis said the project’s architect has just completed the schematic design and likely will finish the detailed plans and cost projections by mid-November. Hopefully, he said, if the Division of State Architect (DSA) approves the plans in two months, construction can begin in mid-January so that the building will be ready for students when they return to school next fall.
As he met with coaches and Live Oak Principal Nick Boden to talk about what kind of things they wanted for the transformed locker room, Solis said supervision was important to coaches who want to see students from their offices and over the lockers. They also want improvements to the locker room’s storage space. He reported 80 percent of the building will be gutted; some walls will be taken down completely.
“There’s probably asbestos, and some of the surrounding tiles probably have lead,” Solis said.
The budget for this project is proposed at $2.5 million.
Work on the Little Theater could begin in April, and construction will likely take approximately one year to complete, Solis said.
“We have looked at all the requirements of the building, how it operates,” he said. “It is a lot more complicated than the locker room. There’s audio-visual, there’s stage rigging. We have met with the building’s users, and we have one more coordinating meeting with them … One of the things we need to do is to create more storage space in the band room.”
The proposed budget for the Little Theater project is $4.5 million.
The first phase of the renovation, completed several years ago, included the construction of a new library and career counseling center, a new practice gym and a new football field and track. The first phase also included the renovation of four classroom buildings.
Marilyn Dubil covers education and law enforcement for The Times. Reach her at (408) 779-4106 ext. 202 or at md****@*************es.com.
