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The San Ramon Valley High School community gathered on sunny Wednesday afternoon for a groundbreaking ceremony to mark the start of construction on the $64 million effort to modernize the century-old campus just outside downtown Danville.
The renovation project aims to replace decades-old single-story classrooms with a modern three-story academic building with 52 state-of-the-art classrooms and laboratories, plus an enlarged quad and additional student parking.
School district officials hope the new classroom building will be completed in time to open for the start of the 2019-20 school year.
“Our oldest buildings in our district will soon become our newest” superintendent Rick Schmitt said in a statement. “Even though this ceremony was about breaking ground on a spectacular new classroom building, schools are only as good as their staff, students and parents. We are grateful for the voters of the San Ramon Valley for supporting school construction through the passage of Measure D.”
The San Ramon Valley High modernization is the largest project funded through Measure D, the $260 million school facilities bond passed by local voters in November 2012.
Students, staff members, parents, district leaders and others joined elected officials like school board members, Danville Mayor Renee Morgan and Contra Costa Supervisor Candace Andersen for the groundbreaking event Wednesday.
School board president Mark Jewett said he was excited for work to begin to transform the campus he attended more than three decades ago.
“Back then, those buildings were a little outdated and dilapidated,” Jewett said in a statement. “Fast forward 30 years and you can understand we are no longer talking restoration or renovation, but transformation, and this new facility will transform teaching and learning experiences at SRVHS.”
Construction fencing associated with the project has actually been up for almost a year at the campus at 501 Danville Blvd.
Initial work began in summer 2016, with crews spending about seven weeks on abatement work for lead paint and asbestos as well as infrastructure upgrades including electrical, data and fire alarm systems.
Demolition came next that August, with crews tearing down single-story classrooms that mostly dated back to the 1960s. That was followed by work on the building pad and utilities installation amid a rainy winter before construction on the new building was cleared to begin last month.
Offering more square footage consolidated into a smaller footprint, the three-story building will be essentially box-shaped, with classrooms, lab spaces and restrooms on three sides in roughly a “C” shape that will face the revamped quad and be oriented toward Danville Boulevard. The fourth side of the building will feature second- and third-story walkways above a ground-level opening that leads into the atrium.
The primary goals of the project include reducing the classroom footprint to create more space for parking, quad area and student assembly as well as enhancing access and supervision and allowing flexibility for future expansion as needed, according to district officials.
The design also calls for about 200 ground-level parking spots behind the new building at the west end of the campus, a higher tally than originally considered. Parking was increased after the Danville Town Council’s offer of $1 million for 200 or more parking spots, plus $200,000 in contingency funds for that effort.
In the meantime, nearly half of the classes for this past school year and the next two are being held in the school’s new “Portable City” — a collection of brand-new relocatable classrooms behind the auxiliary gym and “D” building, on new blacktop where the junior varsity baseball field used to sit.
Originally founded in 1910, San Ramon Valley High experienced several other updating efforts over the decades that aimed to upgrade the campus, according to district officials.
