School Repairs Estimated to Cost $8.3 Million

The long-closed Washington School, which midtown residents rallied for years to have designated as a historical site and refurbished, would prove costly to reopen as a school.

This conclusion comes from a six-month study of the 1920s structure conducted by Ehlen & Spiess Inc., an engineering firm based in Santa Barbara.

“My opinion is that the cost to rehabilitate that school in conformance with state law would be more expensive than replacing it with a new building,” said the firm’s owner, Peter Ehlen, a structural engineer, who spoke during a Ventura Unified School District board meeting Tuesday night.

The rough estimate for refurbishing the 71-year-old school came to nearly $8.3 million, while the cost to tear down the building and develop a new campus amounted to about $5.1 million, according to the report.

A soils study released earlier this month by Earth Systems, an environmental firm in Ventura, indicated the site potentially could be a safety hazard. The report described some of the soil beneath the building as loose and submerged in water, a situation that could sink the building 9 inches during an earthquake.

One of the reasons school officials asked for the studies was to determine whether Washington School would be a suitable site to combine the student populations of Pierpont and Lincoln elementary schools, two of the district’s smaller schools.

District trustees and administrators said the decision about whether to raze or reopen Washington School might not be made for several years, saying they must first grapple with such issues as trimming class sizes throughout the district and building another elementary school in east Ventura.

“The board will reevaluate it,” said Jorge Gutierrez, district director of facilities and maintenance, of the new report. “No decision on what’s going to happen has been made at this time.”