SANTA ANA : District Planning ‘Space Saver’ School

To stave off massive overcrowding at local intermediate schools, school district officials hope to build a controversial “space saver” school designed as an addition to a local shopping mall.

However, some residents complain that the $43-million project would be too costly, potentially unsafe for students and should be located elsewhere.

Under the plan, the Santa Ana Unified School District would build a 98,000-square-foot campus at the rear of Bristol Market Place, located at 17th and Bristol streets. The campus would accommodate 1,300 students in the sixth through eighth grades.

Designed to conserve land, the project would include a three-story building, with two floors of classrooms sitting atop a parking structure, as well as an outdoor playing field, said Mike Vail, senior director of facilities.

By the year 2000, local intermediate schools will house about 5,000 more students than their designed capacities. Even with the addition of the planned Raymond A. Villa Intermediate School, and the “space saver” campus, the number of students will exceed school capacities by about 2,400, Vail said.

Recognizing the district’s dire need for additional classroom space, state officials set aside $23 million earlier this month to design the school and promised $20 million more to build it by about 1996, he said.

However, the district may only use the money to build a school at the Bristol Market Place site. Also, district officials must begin the project swiftly or forfeit the funds to another district, Vail said.

The project, to be funded entirely by the state, would avoid the use of eminent domain, through which the district could force people or businesses to sell their property to make room for a new school, he said.

“This is a tremendous accomplishment for the school district. It’s a great opportunity to build a much-needed school five to seven years before when it would have otherwise been built,” Vail said.

Space-Saving School District officials have proposed attaching a middle school to the back of Bristol Market Place in Santa Ana. Source: Santa Ana Unified School District