The Peninsula Daily News updated their story about the pending demise of the Forks High School Facade that dates back to the 1920’s.

Their revised account states:

“School officials still hope that something can be done to save the facade at Forks High School as a freestanding monument on the redeveloped campus.

According to the conditional use permit granted to the Quillayute Valley School District by the city last summer, the district must hold a public hearing and give the community 45 days in which to find alternate funding to pay for reinforcing the brick facade.

Reinforcement and renovation would be required for the facade to remain as a stand-alone structure as a memory of the 1925 portion of the school, which figures descriptively in the Twilight saga of novels.

A date has not been set for the public hearing.

The board voted Friday night that the facade would be too expensive to pay for out of the bond issue passed by voters last February.”

The Forks Forum has also been covering the story. Their council is pictured above discussing the matter at a public meeting. (Photo credit: Chris Cook)  Their coverage states that:

“Of particular interest is how much the winning contractor will charge to restore and stabilize the facade of the section of the circa 1925 Forks High School that was spared when D&H Enterprises demolished most of the building over the summer. Estimated costs ran from a low of about $19,000 to a high of several hundred thousand dollars.

Some of the base bids announced ranged from $12.6 million to $14 million-plus. The final dollar figures of each bid opened will take several days to calculate. Construction work is scheduled to begin later this fall.
A $1.5 million woody bio-mass school heating plant is near completion, and a ribbon cutting is scheduled for mid-October. The plant is designed to use wood chips to heat the near addition.”

The original building of the Forks High School campus that dated back to the 1920’s was taken down earlier this year. When we were in Forks last year, one of the school staff members told us about how difficult is was to maintain the aging building. Just to heat it barely effectively they had to crank up an aging and inefficient system at 3:00am. Even then, the students were still wearing coats in the building.

Originally, it was hoped that the historic facade could be preserved, but this now seems impractical. According to the Penninsula Daily News:

“The School Board was hoping to incorporate the front of the building — left standing when the rest of the condemned structure was demolished last summer — into the design of the new campus.

The facade would have been left as a stand-alone structure as a part of a grand entrance to the school.

The brick design of the leaky old building figures heavily in the descriptions of the Twilight saga, which has propelled Forks and the West End to worldwide acclaim.

But saving the facade would cost $271,000 on top of the $12.2 million construction bid accepted Friday, and its just not feasible to spend the money that way, said Bill Rohde, School Board president.”

See more on the Penninsula Daily News.

Via Gossip Cop