Proceed With Mission School

The San Buenaventura Mission has a long, rich past. It also has a vibrant present--and an ambitious future. The desire to respect and preserve its history is important but that desire must not overshadow the mission’s continuing role as a living, active center of Ventura’s religious and educational life.

The city of Ventura should approve the mission’s latest plan to erect a school building while preserving the site for future archeology, if the design passes seismic muster. With care, it is time for construction to proceed.

The mission has sought for several years to expand its Holy Cross School. The intended site is a sloped, grassy field that once served as the original quadrangle of the 215-year-old mission. It was lined with adobe buildings that housed priests, novices and the Indians who served as labor force. Eventually, those buildings caved in and were covered by eroding dirt from the hillside behind them.

After much debate over whether or how to preserve any archeological material on the site, ground was broken for the new school last September. But construction stopped in January when the project’s impact on buried relics was again questioned.

Mission officials considered other sites but found none that would keep school and church in their historic relationship, side by side. They allayed concerns of local Chumash leaders by agreeing to erect a monument on the site of the old school building, which stands atop an ancient Chumash cemetery.

In an attempt to make peace with archeologists and preservationists who have held up the project, they offered a design change that would leave space for future archeological work to be done beneath the school’s floor. Rather than excavating space enough to sink a full foundation into the ground, a grid of concrete beams would rest on concrete caissons anchored in bedrock. Three feet of sand or dirt would be filled in beneath the grid to preserve the ruins.

The city’s building department will soon decide whether to approve or reject the new design. Barring safety problems or code violations, the project should be allowed to proceed.

The San Buenaventura Mission does contain a museum but the mission itself is no dusty relic. It deserves the room to build a future as glorious as its past.