HSR could be end of BHS as we know it
| Saturday, May 15 2010 09:52 PM
Last Updated Saturday, May 15 2010 09:52 PM
If Bakersfield folks haven't considered the visual, aesthetic and historical impacts that High-Speed Rail will have on this close-to-the-ground Central Valley city, now might be the time.
The 220 mph trains, which could be running up and down the spine of California in 10 years, and in perhaps as few as seven, will dominate the city landscape. More to the point, the rail system's five-story, 50-foot-wide viaduct could become the single most distinctive feature of the city's urban profile.
Think about that. Running parallel to Truxtun Avenue, a massive, high-rise (by local standards) framework that will carry elevated passenger cars into an above-ground station and then onward and upward toward the valley's southern ring of mountains -- and back down again.
Animated depictions of the HSR viaduct are impressive. The structure will be breathtaking -- sleek, even elegant, and unlike anything this outsized oil town has ever seen.
But established pieces of the city will have to go in order to clear a path -- and one of the pieces HSR planners have in mind, if the "blue line" option endorsed by the Bakersfield Planning Commission is ultimately selected, will upset many. The "blue line" will take California's bullet train right through the north side of the 117-year-old Bakersfield High School campus, taking out the Industrial Arts building and coming within 100 feet of historic Harvey Auditorium. How a school is supposed to function literally in the shadow of such a colossus defies credulity. In fact, for a school that already has the fewest acres of the city's 15 comprehensive high schools, it may prove impossible.
Kern High School District Superintendent Don Carter is unsettled at the thought. "Obviously, we want the safest and most suitable learning environment for our students and staff" at Bakersfield High, Carter said. "The compatibility issue is of great concern."
Carter said the district will expect the California High-Speed Rail Authority to "fully mitigate" any impacts on BHS, up to and including a completely new campus. A new Bakersfield High.
But Carter, a former BHS principal, is clearly loath to accept that solution.
"The state does not allow schools to be built near freeways, near airports," he said. "So it raises the question: If you can't build a school near a transportation corridor, why can you build a transportation corridor near a school?"
But it's being considered.
Consultants from the state's high-speed rail agency asked BHS history teacher and campus historical archivist Ken Hooper to provide evidence that the at-risk buildings have historical significance of a nature that would merit special protection. And hurry up about it, please: The consultants came to town on April 21, and on April 29 they told Hooper he had until May 3 to present findings that in any other setting would have required months to gather. Hooper's archiving class dropped almost everything and went to work.
Hooper sent his students diving into old copies of the Blue and White campus newspaper, old Oracle yearbooks and the school's extensive photo and document collections to find relevant information on the school's architectural history. He solicited help from local experts John Edward Powell and Gilbert Gia, as well as the Kern County Museum, Beale Library, the Kern County Historical Society and the Bakersfield College archives (BC and BHS shared the same G Street campus for decades).
The kids found evidence that both Industrial Technology buildings were designed by preeminent regional architect Charles Biggar, who also designed both wings of similarly endangered Spindt Hall (1924 and 1938), iconic Griffith Stadium (1923) and the initial design of the Harvey, completed after his death in 1946. (Biggar also designed Bakersfield Fire Station 1, The Californian building and the Haberfelde.)
"If they don't believe we are a historical district, then they won't believe anything," Hooper said. "I told the kids we are showing them a golden egg, and they may say it is actually lead."
Hooper's archivists plan to attend when the Bakersfield City Council considers the Planning Commission's route recommendation June 9. The council will have more to consider than the impact on BHS, however; the "red line" alternative would affect an entirely different array of potentially aggrieved parties, including Mercy Hospital and assorted churches along the route.
"Either line is going to be disruptive," said Carrie Bowen, regional director for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. "And it's starting to become real to people. Things will be different. It's a paradigm shift for the Central Valley."
rprice@bakersfield.com
