Central staff reminisces over historic building
The original site of Central Junior College and for over 50 years a multi-purpose classroom at Central Union High School, constructed in 1913, is slated to be demolished soon.
Known as the “old business building” the century old structure was in use for English, social studies, biology, robotics classes and the Law Academy until this spring term.
“I believe it was the first community college in Imperial Valley,” said Arnold Preciado, Central Union High School District assistant superintendent. “But the building will be replaced by something much more beneficial, a state-of-theart STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) building with construction to begin about January.”
The new STEM building came about with the passage of Measure K, a $30 million bond in June 2016. Demolition is expected next week but the contractor gave no date, said Preciado.
“It’s a critical addition to students,” he said. “It’s a necessary change to continue the quality services our students have come to expect.”
The demolition removes 10 trailer classrooms and seven classrooms in the old office building noted CUHS principal Craig Lyon. The STEM building will have 30 new classrooms, expected to be completed in 2020/2021. Students will have to juggle with classes in new temporary trailers for the next couple of years, built on the outdoor basketball courts.
“Everybody hates to see an old building go away but the majority will be amazed to see what takes its place … we saved some fixtures from the original,” said Lyon. “We were doing experiments in classes never meant for that. The new building will have four wet labs and 11 dry labs all centrally located. The biggest challenge was to get teachers to move to new trailers and they did an amazing job in a short period of time.”
The old business building was devoted to short-hand, typing classes and the business club recalled Emma Jones, former CUHS teacher and principal from 1965 to 2008, now school board member.
“There’s only so much Band-Aids you can put on a building before you have to build a new one,” said Jones. “The main problem was the classrooms were very small and inefficient. And to make the restrooms ADA compliant was difficult. And there was no central air conditioning just window units you had to shout over. I’ve seen the plans for the new building and all the math and science teachers had input so they’re excited for it too.”
Jack Tyler who graduated from CUHS in the early 1950s recalled that the old business building served as the Central Junior College site and shared classes with advanced high school students who took college level courses. Tyler, former president of Tyler Insurance Agency, was founded by his father, who served on the college committee.
Doing his own research on the first 15 years of area education, Tyler self-published a book titled “Schools of Imperial Valley,” with copies available at Pioneers Museum.
“Central Junior College was part of CUHSD,” he said. “It was established in spring 1922 and opened for classes in the fall of 1922. But in a county-wide election in the fall of 1959 they officially established Imperial Valley College. And they wanted to get out El Centro to make it a Valley-wide institution. But it was several years later they had their own separate campus.”
No exact date is set for the demolition of the building but officials estimate it will be early next week. The district is welcoming the public to watch the demolition and will release a definitely date later this week.