HUNTINGTON BEACH : Cafeteria Building at School to Be Razed

Demolition crews are slated next week to start razing the former cafeteria and homemaking building at Ethel Dwyer Middle School. The building was constructed in 1924 and is believed to be the oldest public school structure still standing in the city.

The building’s most recent major rehabilitation occurred in 1934, the year after it rode out an earthquake that destroyed an adjoining school building on the Dwyer campus.

The cafeteria building was part of the original Dwyer campus that was constructed between 1915 and 1931. All the school’s original structures have been replaced except for the cafeteria building and what is now the City Gym and Pool, which was built in 1931.

The Dwyer cafeteria building is believed to be two years older than the auditorium at Huntington Beach High School, the oldest building on the high school campus, which was finished in 1926, officials said.

Engineering evaluations in the 1960s and 1980s showed that the nearly 70-year-old cafeteria building contained structural deficiencies. It was discontinued as a school building and used as a district administrative office until 1980. That year, district officials moved into new offices at the former Lois and Harry LeBard School.

Huntington Beach City School District trustees on Monday awarded a contract to the Environmental Control Systems company in Quail Valley to demolish the building at a cost of $47,600.

Trustees also approved a $123,293 contract with V.S. Construction Service of Santa Ana to install a portable food services building on the Dwyer campus.

Work is scheduled to begin at the start of Christmas vacation and, it is hoped, will be completed before classes resume on Jan. 4, officials said.

School district Supt. Duane Dishno said Tuesday that the cafeteria building, which at one time hosted kindergarten classes, is in such disrepair that it is better to tear it down and build a new one rather than try to renovate it.

The current food services structure at Dwyer also is dilapidated and a new facility is needed, Dishno said.

He said school trustees are scheduled next month to discuss whether to construct a $2.6-million, three-story building at the site of the old cafeteria building at 735 14th St. Plans call for a cafeteria and a media center to be on the ground floor. There would be six science labs on the second floor. The third floor would contain eight classrooms accommodating 420 students.

The windows of the old building are now boarded up, and vandals have scrawled graffiti on the outside.

Don Pate, principal at Smith Elementary School who remembers attending kindergarten classes in the old building 55 years ago, said Tuesday that he has fond memories of the structure.

“I must have eaten at least a thousand meals in the building,” he said. “It had a lot of windows and it was very (bright). It was a modern, first-class cafeteria.”

But Pate said he has no regrets about its pending demise when he considers the benefits of the proposed improvements. “We badly need them, and I can’t feel bad,” he said.