City College will remove 22 of the 44 unsafe portable buildings on its main campus in Feb. 2014.
The portables were given to City College by Santa Monica College in 1999 and were constructed in 1993 to 1994. City College had not been approved to use the portables by the District of the State Architect or the California Coastal Commission. They were labeled unsafe last October by Joe Wilcox, an architect for Kruger Bensen Ziemer, because of the foundation’s decaying wood caused by dry rot.
The plan to remove the portables was reviewed by Joe Sullivan, vice president of business services, at the College Planning Council meeting Tuesday, Sept. 3.
“Our appeal to the [California] Coastal Commission is to talk to them about replacing the modular buildings with permanent buildings.” said Sullivan. “Our first attempt at that is the West Campus classroom building.”
The humanities department is using many of these portables as swing space while their main building is under construction. The classrooms will be forced to house students until Dec. 2013.
“After the completion of the humanities building, we want to take out the worst buildings and [temporarily] keep the buildings in the best repair,” said Sullivan. “The first phase of this is taking some of the swings space and converting it to usable space.”
When the demolition begins in 2014, they will remove East Campus classroom portables 8-13, 22-27 and West Campus portables 1 and 2, the faculty resource center portables, and the security office portables.
After the new West Campus classroom building is complete in 2016 the college will demolish 12 more portables. The administration’s plan is to demolish 7 buildings in 2018 and 13 buildings in 2020.
“This will hopefully make a positive statement to the [California] Coastal Commission,” said Superintendent President Dr. Lori Gaskin. “We honor our word and approach this situation with integrity and commitment.”
The portable removal plan can be viewed in the College Planning Council’s agenda attachments located here.
