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  • Construction continues to transform a former Mission Street office park...

    Construction continues to transform a former Mission Street office park into the future home of Pacific Collegiate School in Santa Cruz on Wednesday. PCS expects to move into the facility in late October. (Shmuel Thaler -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)

  • Pacific Collegiate School's interior is beginning to take shape. (Shmuel...

    Pacific Collegiate School's interior is beginning to take shape. (Shmuel Thaler -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)

  • A curb is poured in the parking lot at Pacific...

    A curb is poured in the parking lot at Pacific Collegiate School’s future campus last week. (Shmuel Thaler -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)

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SANTA CRUZ >> One Friday in the next several weeks, professional movers will swarm across Pacific Collegiate School’s Swift Street campus, boxing up everything inside, minus the students, for a complete relocation.

The independent public charter school is on the brink of making its third move in its 16-year history, this time to its own property and less than a mile away. The $9 million construction, including complete gutting and makeover of a two-story former business park facility at 3004 Mission St., began in December. Finishing touches are due later this month.

“It’s nearing completion. They have carpet down on most of the floors, the walls have been painted, the ceiling systems are going in. It looks beautiful,” Principal Simon Fletcher said. “The design and the color schemes I think are going to make for a happy environment for kids.”

The grade 7 through 12 school, with the fundraising help of the Pacific Collegiate Foundation, began the ambitious project to find a new home in 2013, after Santa Cruz City Schools gave it two years to depart from its home since 2003 at the former Natural Bridges Elementary School. At the time, the school district said it intended to reopen the elementary school for its own use, a plan shelved during budget talks in June 2014.

Fletcher said the move will happen as soon as feasible, even coming midsemester. By turning a Monday into a day off for students and professional day for school staff, teachers will not be forced to work during a holiday break to set up their new classrooms, he said.

The school will save $30,000 in monthly rent payments to Santa Cruz City Schools the earlier it leaves, Fletcher said. An interim plan for the school to continue using the Swift Street site’s gym and outdoor playing fields is in place now, and negotiations are underway for long-term use there and potentially at other district sites, Fletcher said.

Pacific Collegiate Foundation President Tom Morell, who declined to reveal the cost of purchasing the Mission Street property, said the foundation will own the site and lease it back to the school to cover costs incurred exceeding the $8.7 million in donations to date.

“We set out a few years to do this, and it is very challenging to develop a new school of this size in Santa Cruz. To find a place, to get the permits, to afford the construction,” Morell said. “I think we managed to deliver a nice school within the budget that we had.”

Some of the stress of the big move will be alleviated by installation of all new school furniture, paid for with a $100,000 grant from the Monterey Peninsula Foundation, host of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, and a $10,000 grant from the Borina Foundation Fund II.

In the past decade and a half, the school has relied heavily on mostly hand-me-down, donated and scavenged furniture that has never quite fit the bill at Pacific Collegiate, Fletcher said. After the move, the school’s task will be to find new homes for the furniture, whether its fundraising sales, donations or other homes.

The new building, where Mission Street splits off from Highway 1, was built within the structure of the former property. Stripped to its walls and a single elevator, the property was built back up to “green” environmentally sustainable standards, Morell said. It will feature a dedicated music room in an attached portable unit, an outdoor deck with a view of the nearby greenbelt, a 25 percent space expansion over the current site and a multiuse student union.