Life Coming Back to Dapplegray School : Facilities: Efforts to transform the vandalized campus into a community center are encouraging. A theater group already is using the multipurpose room.

So far, so good. That’s the word from a group of school officials and area volunteers who want to convert the long-vacant and heavily vandalized Dapplegray Intermediate School in Rolling Hills Estates into a community center.

Already, the community theater group Curtains Up! has remodeled the school’s old multipurpose room, turning it into a small theater, and staged several productions there.

There is talk of a children’s day-care center and sports complex on the 43-acre campus off Palos Verdes Drive North. And if all goes as planned, a gymnastics school will soon open.

“Things are looking up. We have some very good possibilities,” said Michael W. Caston, superintendent of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District.

After years of fighting over the future of the school property, the city and the school district are working together to turn the site into a full-fledged community center. The City Council recently adopted a master plan for the site, governing the kinds of programs it will allow at the community center, things like private schools, art centers and dance studios.

“The city has been meeting with the school district looking for ideas how best to use the school,” city Planning Director Richard Thompson said.

The school board closed Dapplegray in 1987 because of declining enrollment, and the campus fell into disrepair and was heavily vandalized.

Windows were smashed, doors were ripped from their hinges, cans of paint were thrown against the graffiti-marked walls. Weeds overcame lawns and playing fields, and debris littered the grounds.

School officials estimated that cleanup costs could run as high as $500,000 and sought to sell the site to developers. But the school board ran into a storm of protest until Curtains Up! approached the city last summer with its plan for a theater and community center.

Led by community activist Beth Dupe, the theater group offered to clean and remodel the multipurpose room and the wood shop as part of a lease agreement. A deal was struck in which the group would lease space it needed for $54,000 a year but work off most of that debt by cleaning up the campus.

“We had lots of volunteers to help us,” said Rene Van Niel, a member of the group’s board of directors. The nonprofit organization spent $8,000 for paint and materials, remodeled the inside of the multipurpose room and built a 100-seat theater, complete with stereo sound and a well-lighted stage.

In turn, the school district, which still owns the property, agreed to clean the adjacent buildings and grounds. Broken windows were boarded up, graffiti painted over and trees pruned.

The theater group moved in September and put on its first production in November, a children’s play. It is working on a production of “M*A*S*H,” set in Vietnam rather than Korea. Cast members are South Bay high school and college students.

Caston said a second tenant, the Dapplegray Gymnastics Club, will open as soon as the district finishes cleaning the area.

“We’re going to clean up the campus bit by bit, as we lease out space,” he said, adding that the plan is to have the whole campus rehabilitated and functioning as a community center within five years. “When it’s fully leased, the site will generate about $300,000 a month, we estimate.”