A local realtor says she is willing to step in front of bulldozers to stop the demolition of a beloved building at Santa Monica High School.
Evelyn Lauchenauer, a life-long resident and graduate of Samohi, organized a rally just off campus Saturday in hopes of saving the 100 year-old History Building which is slated to be leveled in the coming weeks.
“I don’t want to give up,” she told The Sun. “If you keep going more people are going to be aware of (the pending demolition) and realize what a waste it is.”
“The next step is to go on campus and put our arms around that building and say, ‘You are not tearing it down!’ Making a human chain. That is what I envision. A human chain around that campus.”
The tear-down and replacement of the History Building is part of a campus-wide renovation authorized by the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District.
Many residents and alumni are now demanding that the iconic structure has historical value and should be repurposed instead of destroyed.
“The History Building has been a pinnacle of Santa Monica education for a century,” said local architect Mario Fonda-Bonardi.
“All the living graduates of Santa Monica High School went to school in that building. All 50,000 of them. Tearing it down is both unecological and ahistorical.”
“This is not the lesson we want to teach our kids: ‘Oh, you can tear down buildings and throw them away like Kleenex.’ We are trying make the school truly sustainable and that means saving as many buildings as you can.”
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Fonda-Bonardi says he has drawn up plans that could permit “adaptive reuse” of the structure — but the school board is not biting.
“At the end of the day they are going to tear down every building on this campus except for Barnum Hall which is the landmarked building,” he said.
Longtime resident Wendy Dembo says she is confused by the mixed message being sent by school district leaders.
She and others believe it would cost less money, preserve history and be consistent with community standards to repurpose the space.
“Santa Monica is a super green city,” Dembo said.
“It makes no sense that our city on one side can be so exited about having a super green City Hall annex and yet have no interest in refurbishing a building that has historical and emotional connections to so many students.”
Carey Upton, Chief Operations Officer for SMMUSD, tells The Sun that there have been “many opportunities for the community to comment and participate in the Samohi Campus Plan over the past four years.”
“The latest plan being touted by these detractors for adaptive reuse of the History Building is at best naïve,” he said.
“We are disappointed that this group choose to trespass onto campus today and disrupt the cleaning scheduled in advance of planned building abatement.”
It is unclear what impact — if any — today’s protest will have on the pending demolition.
“They say ‘We have already decided to tear it down. We can’t change our minds. The dye is cast,” Fonda-Bonardi said.
“There is a slim chance it could work but we have to be here and bear witness. You don’t just give up just because they have the deck stacked against you.”
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