Pegasus School wins H.B. commission’s approval for modernization project

Plans are moving forward to modernize Pegasus School after the private campus won approval Tuesday night from the Huntington Beach Planning Commission.

With their 6-0 vote, commissioners granted the school a conditional use permit to demolish several modular buildings and make room for two new permanent structures at 19692 Lexington Lane. Commissioner Connie Mandic was absent.

The new buildings will house a media center, library and classrooms.

The commission’s decision is final unless appealed to the City Council within 10 days.

The first phase, which is scheduled to begin this summer, entails tearing down seven modular buildings and replacing them with a 16,600-square-foot, single-story classroom and lab building.

Pegasus also will reconfigure its parking lot by adding three spaces, for a total of 194. The modification will remove a grass area to improve traffic flow when parents drop off and pick up their children, according to Jason Lopez, head of the school.

Lopez said the goal is to complete the parking lot reconfiguration by Labor Day, before students return to classes the next day.

The second phase will include knocking down a classroom building and replacing it with a 5,651-square-foot, single-story library and media center and — if funding permits — building a new playground.

Administrators don’t have a start date for that phase, but they have a 10-year window to complete the work.

The new buildings are planned to be positioned in a way that creates an interior school quad with new landscaping and outdoor student seating.

Commissioners John Scandura and Michael Grant commended the project team for communicating with neighbors and easing construction and noise concerns by limiting work hours.

“I think it’s an exciting plan for the school,” said Scandura, who added that the modernization will make Pegasus “even more desirable.”

Grant said it was a “shame that some grass area will be lost” but that he understood the “greater good” of improving traffic flow.

Pegasus School plans to keep enrollment capped at 595 students in prekindergarten through eighth grade.