Stockton Building Coming Down To Make Room For Playground
STOCKTON (CBS13) — A Stockton building that has been part of the downtown landscape for almost a century will soon be coming down.
City leaders voted Tuesday to demolish the site that sits on the campus of Team Charter School on East Market Street.
It's a building many people around the community have been fighting to keep, including Stockton City Councilwoman Christina Fugazi.
"This building does have historical merit whether or not it has been officially registered with the state or the federal government," she said.
The building, located at 625 East Market Street, sits on the team charter school campus. Administrators had plans to demolish it, but protests put a temporary stop to the project.
"The fact remains that this is a part of our iconic history, back in the days when we were known as brick city," said Fugazi.
Despite their efforts to save the building, the Stockton City Council voted to support the school's decision to demolish it and make room for more playground space and more restroom facilities for its growing campus.
"You can see by looking at our playground that we don't have a lot of space for the amount of children that we have and so any amount of space is necessary for them to have so this would enable us to give more space," said Noel Krogh, deputy director of Creative Child Care, Inc., Team Charter.
There are more than 700 students at team charter. The downtown campus has students from kindergarten through fifth grade, and administrators say they plan to expand to junior high next year.
"In a dream world, we would love to have it up and running but the appeal, but a little hitch in our timeline so we will be doing as much as we can, as soon as we can and hopefully it will happen as close to start of school as possible," said Krogh.
There are many people around the community interested in saving some of the parts in this building for historical purposes. In the meantime, the first day of school here starts on Aug. 14.
