The Wrecking Ball Is Not Progress: The 80-Year Cost of Demolishing San Rafael Elementary

GUEST OPINION

San Rafael Elementary School (File Photo – pusd.us)

There is a number that should stop every school board member, every facilities director, and every taxpayer in their tracks: 80 years.

By Ana Soulriver

It takes between 10 and 80 years for a new energy-efficient building to recover the carbon cost of demolishing the building that existed before it.[1] Yet demolition remains our first instinct as the permit gets pulled, the wrecking ball swings, and we call it progress as a new structure appears.

The Pasadena Unified School District Board recently authorized $125 million to demolish and fully rebuild San Rafael Elementary.  This decision was made despite serious fiscal objections, without a lifecycle carbon analysis, and without a single Board member asking the question the circular economy[2] demands, i.e., what does it cost to destroy what we already have?

The answers to that question are based in science, and those answers are not ambiguous. A peer-reviewed Norwegian study found that refurbishing an historic building reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 67 percent over 60 years compared to new construction. Construction-phase emissions for new buildings are 12 times higher than for a comparable refurbishment. A landmark study by the National Trust for Historic Preservation found that building reuse reduces environmental impacts by 4 to 46 percent compared to demolition and new construction across all building types and climates.

The circular economy applied to buildings is not an abstraction. It should be a line item in a school district budget that asks for every building simply, what are we actually destroying when we demolish a building?

Every brick, every beam, every slab of concrete in a school campus is a material in a bank. Demolition is not clearance. Demolition is the destruction of capital that took decades to accumulate. It cannot be recovered on any timescale relevant to our climate commitments. When PUSD pulls that demolition permit, it will: destroy embodied carbon that cannot be recaptured; generate construction and demolition waste that Pasadena’s own Construction and Demolition Waste Diversion Ordinance can only partially redirect;  and obligate the atmosphere to absorb the full emissions burden of an entirely new construction cycle.

It will do all of this without PUSD even running the numbers. The fiscal dimension deserves its own reckoning. The project’s total cost has risen to roughly three times its original bond allocation. Additional funding above Measure O will now come from Measure R before PUSD has completed its facilities master plan. Trustee Kenne raised this concern on the record, noting that Measure R commitments are approaching $375 million of the measure’s $900 million total.

Construction costs have surged and yet PUSD’s considered path is via new construction without considering the impacts of that decision. Demolition is not only carbon-wasteful. It is financially wasteful. The circular economy principle i.e. that materials already in place have value and that destruction is not neutral, applies to public budgets as much as it applies to the atmosphere.

Pasadena passed its first Adaptive Reuse Ordinance on April 7, 2025. Westminster City Council in London adopted a formal Retrofit First policy in November 2024. It requires that any developer proposing substantial demolition demonstrate sequentially that the building 1) cannot be retrofitted, 2) cannot serve the proposed use through retention, and 3) does not result in lower whole-life carbon. The hierarchy is codified in law beginning with retrofit, retrofit with extension, deep retrofit, and new construction as the last option.

Pasadena has every tool at it’s disposal that London used. What Pasadena does not yet have is a school Board willing to use these tools. Perhaps, they are not receiving from the school district the necessary information to make an informed decision.

There is a concept in Japanese art called kintsugi. It is the practice of repairing broken things with gold, so that the fracture is made visible rather than hiding it. The history of the object is honored rather than pretending it was never damaged. It is the philosophy behind what I call the kintsugi of urbanism. Our cities, like our ceramics, are more honest and more resilient when we heal them visibly rather than replacing them entirely. Adaptive reuse does not mean keeping the status quo. It means reinventing, revitalizing, giving second life with character that no tenant improvement budget can manufacture, because the character is already there.

We can put sustainability in every mission statement and teach circular economy principles in science class. But when a School Board chooses demolition over repair without running a single carbon calculation or examining alternates that may provide a better and more cost effective solution for a historically financially strapped school district, the selection of demolition teaches something far louder than any curriculum for PUSD’s students. Our children watched the Eaton Fire. They watched neighborhoods disappear. They already are living with the consequences of decades of decisions that prioritized convenience over consequence. Now the institution entrusted with their education is making a facilities decision that ignores embodied carbon, generates unnecessary waste, draws down bond funds before the master plan is complete, and labels that decision modernization.   What kind of example is that for PUSD’s students?

There is a free tool called the CARE Tool, the Carbon Avoided Retrofit Estimator, recommended by Carl Elefante FAIA, 2018 president of the American Institute of Architects. He gave us the phrase the field now lives by: “The greenest building is the one that is already built.” PUSD could have run the estimator before the vote. It chose not to so do.

The San Rafael vote has been taken. But Octavia Butler Magnet Dual-Language STEAM Middle School and Washington Elementary STEM Magnet  School are still standing. The question is whether PUSD will use the tools it has before the fracture becomes permanent, and before we teach a generation of children that destruction is easier than care. Although a decision was made regarding San Rafael Elementary School, I believe things are not final until the wrecking ball has swung. Send a message to the Board of PUSD that it is not too late to do the most prudent thing and spare the wrecking ball. Adaptive reuse is fiscally responsible and is the most effective option for San Rafael Elementary School.

Ana Soulriver is a Senior Associate at NAI Capital Commercial focused on adaptive reuse and retail leasing, and a civic leader in Pasadena serving on the Environmental Advisory Commission and Pasadena Heritage.

[1] National Trust for Historic Preservation, The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse, at ix (2011).

[2] The circular economy is a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products as long as possible. In this way, the life cycle of products is extended. In practice, it implies reducing waste to a minimum. When a product reaches the end of its life, its materials are kept within the economy wherever possible thanks to recycling. These can be productively used again and again, thereby creating further value. (See European Parliament Article 24-05-2023 – 11:4920151201STO05603.)

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