Board of Education Recommends Building New RUHS Cafeteria

Students of Redondo Union High School will have a new cafeteria/student union building, the Redondo Beach Board of Education members made a recommendation Tuesday night.

With the $3,477,000 budget allocated from Measure C, the school district board members discussed different design options for the renovation project and decided to go with the most costly option with a price tag of $4,885,000, instead of the modernization plans.

The board also picked all four feature improvements that will add $1,158,000 to the overall price: photovoltaic panels, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), rooftop dining and enlarged floor plan.  

"All the options look great to me," said Todd Loewenstein, board's presiding officer. "This is going to generate a lot of excitement and a lot of interests not only from the students and faculty, but also the community at large."

RUHS Principal Mary Little agreed, "You have my enthusiastic support for the idea that we will have a new facility."

The decision to add the four features did not come unanimously. Board members Arlene Staich and Jane Diehl said that the rooftop dining space would bring potential security issues.

"I've been around too many high school kids. You're going to have to have a full-time supervisor," Diehl said. "I just don't think it is advisable."

Diehl also expressed her concern over the growing cost of the project.

"I am obviously more conservative about dollars. We still haven't done the library, we still haven't done other things," she said.

Dr. Steven Keller, superintendent of schools, said that it is up to the board to decide how to spend the Measure C funds — a $145 million general obligation bond program that will provide funding for classroom and school facility improvements throughout the school district — and it is possible to reallocate the money between projects within the district.   

"If we are going to do this, we should do it right," Loewenstein said.

The new building is designed to create a stronger connection between indoors and outdoors with glass roll-up doors facing the quad and the rest of the campus and integrating the outdoor seating with the building.

With an estimated cost of $300,000, the photovoltaic panels on the roof would help to offset 35 to 40 percent of the electricity usage at the facility.

Also, adding approximately 1,000 square feet to the new facility floor plan would result in tripling the current number of seating in/outside the cafeteria.  

A construction period is scheduled to start after eight to 10 months of finalizing the project and last about a year.