Project name: Wecoma Place

Location: Lincoln City

Completion: June 2024

Size: 35,155 square feet

Owner/Developer: Stewardship Development

Architect: Otak

Engineers: Froelich Engineers, Humber Design Group, MFIA,

General Contractor: Walsh Construction

Submitting Company: Otak

Other Key Participants: Oregon Housing and Community Services, Housing Authority of Lincoln County

Subcontractors: Absolute Construction Services, Academy Specialties, Aleman’s Flooring, Browns Architectural Sheet Metal, Buffalo Welding, Gormley Plumbing + Mechanical, Inland Electric, PONO Building Consultants, Sign Wizards, Teragan & Associates

A new affordable housing development is bringing relief to residents displaced by the 2020 Echo Mountain Fire, overcoming significant site challenges to provide much-needed homes on Oregon’s coast.

Wecoma Place, a 44-unit development in Lincoln County, provides apartments at 56 percent and 30 percent Area Median Income levels, primarily serving seniors who lost homes in the devastating wildfire that struck the region four years ago. The building’s design draws inspiration from the coastal landscape, featuring three distinct masses resembling geomorphic beach formations. Exterior siding incorporates patterns reflecting the region’s wind-swept grasses, integrating the structure with its surroundings.

The project stands out for its innovative approach to zoning compliance and site adaptation. It presents as a two-story structure from Highway 101 while actually incorporating a four-story building with an adjacent outdoor courtyard.

Developers faced formidable obstacles, including a steep 30-foot grade change, multiple city sewer easements, and an existing single-family residence surrounded on three sides by the project site. These factors had previously hindered development efforts.

The successful execution required extensive collaboration between contractor Walsh, ownership group Stewardship, and the architecture and engineering team led by Otak.

Sustainability features include solar-ready and electric vehicle-ready infrastructure, allowing for future renewable energy and EV installations. The development also utilizes materials specifically chosen for durability in the coastal environment, protecting against moisture, salt air, and high winds. A central courtyard serves dual purposes as recreational space for residents and buffer from adjacent Highway 101. The design prioritizes natural   light throughout living spaces.

The development promotes multimodal transportation with adjacent access to a bus stop and bike lane, plus on-site parking options.

During construction, the general contractor implemented a comprehensive safety program focusing on training, planning, measuring, and relating. Weekly safety check-ins with tradespersons created a proactive safety culture.

The project had a 20 percent MWESB contracting goal and achieved 22.10 percent participation.

As Lincoln County continues recovering from wildfire impacts, Wecoma Place represents a significant step toward rebuilding the community while addressing critical affordable housing needs along Oregon’s coast.

Agencies instrumental to the project were Oregon Housing and Community Services and the Housing Authority of Lincoln County.

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Lincoln City, seeking an injection of economic vitality and workforce housing, is making available eight developable properties ranging in size from less than an acre to 6.5 acres.

The coastal city on Feb. 1 issued a request for expressions of interest in the properties. The city’s urban renewal agency is seeking a developer or developers to build workforce and mixed-income housing on certain parcels and mixed-use buildings on others.

“Much like other small coastal communities, we need workforce housing,” said Alison Robertson, director of Lincoln City’s urban renewal agency. “Of course, the more workforce housing we can incorporate the better, but we want to have mixed-income communities.”

The city cobbled together the properties over several years. Then officials waited for the economy to improve before offering it to developers, Robertson said.

Lincoln City officials hope the developable offerings will help jump-start the local economy.

“Attracting developers to the coast is always a challenge,” Robertson said. “There’s just not enough happening. So we’re all trying to entice them by putting our best foot forward.”

The largest of the properties available is a 6.5-acre subdivision known as Fernwood that was platted but not built. The site is vacant but with some infrastructure in place. A private road, Fernwood Loop, was built. Water and sewer lines are also in place and stubbed out to each lot. Conduits for electricity, telephone and cable are in place. A defunct development plan anticipated 65 townhomes.

The property is in the northernmost portion of Lincoln City. City officials anticipate offering the “roughed in” road in as-is condition with the expectation a developer would finish the road, although it has no known defects, according to the city.

Fernwood is zoned for single-family or multifamily construction.

Another property – the only one with a building – is a twin-bay fire station. The single-story building at 914 S.W. Fourth St. is zoned for general commercial use. Lincoln City officials envision an adaptive reuse project with a brewpub, a coffee shop or other food business in the building, possibly along with a bike shop or other tourism-centered business.

As with most Oregon coastal communities, Lincoln City has struggled to grow. The population of Lincoln County, which includes Lincoln City, Newport and other towns, has grown by only about 100 people per year since 2010. The county had 46,685 residents in 2016, according to a Census Bureau estimate.

Lincoln County has a large population of baby boomers who are rapidly reaching retirement age, said Josh Lehner, an economist at the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis.

“Lincoln County is going through this transition, and it’s more pronounced than in most other counties,” he said.

In recent years, Lincoln County has had more deaths than births, although relatively strong in-migration has supported some modest population growth, Lehner said.

“The working-age population, although it’s shrinking today a little bit, we don’t expect it to shrink forever,” he said. “The outlook is bright or at least relatively bright. I think what Lincoln’s going through is more of a transition period than a permanent decline.”

Lincoln City’s overall residential vacancy rate is only 6.6 percent, compared to 8.6 percent in rural Oregon, according to the Census Bureau. Lincoln City also has many houses that are used part-time as vacation rentals or second homes.

Lincoln City is prepared to offer a variety of incentives to developers, according to the request. Sale or lease write-downs are possible, along with deferral or financing of system development charges.

Possible deal structures include standard purchase and sale, ground lease, joint venture or a sale and lease-back scenario, according to the offering.

“The city recognizes that we are not developers,” Robertson said. “We really are looking at private-sector and nonprofit developers to come forward.”

Responses to Lincoln City’s request for expressions of interest are due by 2 p.m. on March 15.

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Almost every year, a portion of Oregon Route 101 on the Oregon Coast south of Seaside closes down because of flooding.

Clatsop County Public Works Director Ed Wegner said this winter could be the last during which motorists find themselves cut off from the main roads to Tillamook and Salem.

Henderson LLC, an environmental design and construction firm in Lake Oswego, has been hired to remove earthen berms and road fill along the Necanicum River and nearby property to protect the highway from flooding.

“Flooding has been a big problem over the years, especially with a lot of localized rain and high tide influences,” said Wegner. “Our consultant, North Coast Land Conservancy, recommended this project.”

Removal of the berms will allow water from the river to flow onto adjacent fields rather than flooding the high way.

County commissioners, at their Nov. 7 meeting, said motorists along the coast are getting more than little frustrated with the almost-annual flooding.

“The troops are grumbling down there pretty loudly now,” said County Commissioner Debra Birkby.

Wagner said the work should be done by next September. Crews from Henderson will also help control erosion by planting trees and plants.

Funding for the project comes from the Oregon Department of Transportation. Wegner said the total cost of the project should between $700,000 and $800,000.

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The derelict Japanese dock that washed ashore on the Oregon Coast‘s Agate Beach about two weeks ago is slated for demolition.

The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department has announced its intention to award an $84,155 contract to Seattle-based to dismantle the dock on shore and remove it from the beach, piece by piece. The dock is debris from the tsunami that ravaged Japan in March 2011.

Eric Muller of Ballard Diving said that dismantling the 7-foot-tall, 19-foot-wide, 66-foot-long dock required underwater services because high tides would submerge much of the dock at certain times of the day. He said cranes and excavators would soon be on location and that the project would take about a week. The company is currently coming up with a plan.

“The Japanese government was kind enough to send us the actual schematics of the dock, so right now we are making sure it’s broken down in the easiest way and trucked off piece by piece,” Muller said.

The Oregon Parks department also considered towing the dock to the nearby city of Newport and dismantling it there, but biology experts advised that exposing the dock to Yaquina Bay posed a high risk of introducing potentially invasive species. That was a big concern for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife staffers, and on June 7, volunteers removed about a ton and a half of plant and animal material from the dock, and buried it inland in 8 feet of sand.

Two of the organisms removed – the Northern Pacific sea star and a marine algae called wakame – are on the global list of the 100 worst invasive species. While the fish and wildlife removed much of those species, inaccessible portions of the dock’s interior and bottom were still considered a threat.

Portions of the dock will also be retained for use as a memorial but details on where that will be located were not available.

Muller said the contract was a great win for Ballard Diving.

“While we were not the lowest bidder, we were qualified to do this sort of work, and that’s why Oregon Parks chose us,” he said.

Bids ranged in price from $79,922 to $240,000.

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Michelle Hermiston was pregnant with her fifth child when she fled an abusive relationship four years ago, hoping to build a better life for her young children.

But starting over in the small coastal town of Lakeside proved difficult. Hermiston struggled to pay her bills and eventually moved her family into a local shelter. Now she is a member of the construction team that is building an $8 million facility for the very organization that helped her get back on her feet.

“I’ve come completely full circle,” Hermiston said. “I was pretty much homeless with five kids – it was miserable. It was all I could do to maintain myself through the day. But we’ve come a long way.”

Oregon Coast Community Action, a nonprofit that provides children’s programs and emergency services, played a major role in Hermiston’s turnaround. She enrolled in an intensive case management program at ORCCA that helped her return to school and enroll two of her children in Head Start.

And Hermiston, 33, recently wrapped up her first job as a carpenter’s apprentice, working on ORCCA’s new Child and Family Resource Center in Coos Bay.

is building the $8 million, 30,000-square-foot facility, a CM/GC project designed by . P&C project manager Brian Shoemaker said it was a “fortunate surprise” when he caught wind of Hermiston’s history with the nonprofit.

“We just went through our normal hiring process, which involves trying to find local crews,” he said. “I think the program she went through got her back on her feet and showed us that the things (ORCCA) is doing (are) working; we were happy to have her as part of the team.”

The two-story, wood-framed building is tucked onto a forested, five-acre site. Construction began in December and is expected to wrap up by fall. All of the structural concrete is in place, and crews began framing the structure at the end of February.

The facility will house a Head Start center on the first floor, and child services, family resource services and administrative offices on the second floor. Next door, crews are working on a $2 million food bank project for ORCCA.

“We have a number of projects in the pipe,” said Patricia Gouveia, ORCCA essential services director. “We’re in a rural community that’s really strapped for good-paying jobs, so we try to go forward any time we can get involved in a project that helps.”

ORCCA values its ability to provide local construction jobs, but Gouveia said officials were nevertheless surprised to see a former program participant on the jobsite.

However, after ORCCA helped Hermiston connect with the local employment organization and community college, she went on to complete the Oregon Green Technology Certificate program. Through Southwestern Oregon Community College, Hermiston got in touch with Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. in Portland, where she completed an eight-week pre-apprenticeship program that put her on a career path in carpentry.

Hermiston’s apprentice work with the P&C concrete crew is over, but she helped pave the way for another struggling individual.

Christopher Thomas was going through ORCCA’s Home Now program, which provides temporary housing for homeless families, when his case manager found out that he had experience in construction. Because of the example Hermiston set, ORCCA reached out to P&C.

“It worked out so well with Michelle (Hermiston), and whenever you can help someone else it makes everybody feel like you’re making a difference,” Shoemaker said. “We didn’t want to let it end there.”

Thomas has a wife and two children, and now a new job. The framing subcontractor, WMX Construction LLC, hired Thomas onto its crew of approximately 20 workers.

And though the jobs are temporary, Hermiston is confident that her five weeks of work on the Child and Family Resource Center will set the stage for a better life in Lakeside.

“It is just absolutely cool how I get to help build the building for the same people who helped me improve my life,” she said. “The trades can be pretty tough, but it is totally my plan to stick with carpentry. … If a single mom with five kids can do it, it’s possible for anyone.”

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Construction is well under way on a new wastewater treatment plant to serve the small coastal communities of Netarts and Oceanside, but a complaint that recently hit Multnomah County Circuit Court has jeopardized the plans for the pipes that will carry sewage to the facility and then move the treated water to the ocean.

The Netarts Oceanside Sanitary District for years has planned to replace its 35-year-old treatment plant. But the drilling company that was hired to build two subsurface pipelines filed a complaint in December against the project’s general contractor, Salem-based , for an alleged breach of contract. Now the route of the pipelines is up in the air, and project costs may rise.

of Cameron Park, Calif., claims that complications from the subsurface conditions led Emery & Sons to unfairly delete HDD’s work from the project, costing the horizontal drilling company an estimated $2.35 million in damages.

Instead of drilling through the hillside, the district is now considering a new plan to lay the pipes along a local road. This plan would mean doubling the length of the pipelines and building a new effluent pump station – adding about $4.2 million to the project, according to Dan Mello, district superintendent. The bid on the project was slightly more than $13 million, he said.

“There’s a difference of opinion on why (the initial plan) didn’t work,” Mello said, unable to comment further on the pending litigation. “Problems were encountered with the drilling, and we had to make a choice to finish this treatment plant on time.”

If the new treatment plant is not able to begin initial operations by Sept. 30, the state Department of Environmental Quality could penalize the district $250 per day for every violation of the schedule that the DEQ and the district agreed to in 2006.

“They tried to drill straight up the hill and hit rock twice in the late winter last year,” said Mike Pinney, a DEQ senior environmental engineer for the northwest region. “Now they have a much longer route, which adds a little expense, but it’s obviously easier to dig and it was impractical to try to keep drilling.”

The alternative route would involve laying two pipelines, each approximately 6,000 feet, beneath local roads.

Rick Evans, vice president of engineering and estimating at HDD, said that the project site is “complicated,” but he and the company’s lawyers declined to comment further.

The official complaint argues that the specifications provided with HDD’s contract documents did not accurately represent the gravel, excessive sand flows and groundwater that the drillers actually encountered, which it says led to problems and project delays.

HDD submitted claims for the additional costs, which Emery denied. Then in June, Emery and the district issued a change order that deleted the $2 million horizontal drilling component from the project.

“We deleted the remaining and uncompleted work on the directional bores; that doesn’t say there won’t be more,” said Vince Makinson, vice president of Emery & Sons. “At this point nothing is contracted for that yet. We haven’t been issued any direction.”

The project was initially expected to receive a significant funding package from U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development. The USDA awarded the Netarts Oceanside Sanitary District a grant for approximately $9 million and a loan for approximately $12 million, but then reduced those awards to $7.4 million and $10 million, respectively, because the project came in several million dollars under its original estimates.

“The economy turned south and contractors were hungry for work, so across the board, bids were coming in well below estimates,” said Sam Goldstein, community programs director for USDA Rural Development. “That was happening everywhere in Oregon and around the country in some places. It’s certainly not typical, but these were odd economic times.”

But now, because of the horizontal drilling problems, the project may receive additional federal money after all. Additional funding amounts are being reviewed by USDA Rural Development, Goldstein said.

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When it comes to design concepts for structures to handle tsunami-type emergencies, Cannon Beach city officials have pretty much seen the gamut.

This past fall, city councilors were considering as many as eight different alternatives. The front-runner was a new, $4.5 million city hall that would double as a tsunami evacuation building.

The 10,000-square-foot, two-story reinforced concrete structure would be elevated on pretensioned concrete pilings. During a tsunami, as many as 1,500 people would be able to wait out high waves inside the building.

The idea petered out.

“That (idea) is a very difficult one for people to accept,” Cannon Beach Councilman Sam Steidel said. “For the most part, they just don’t trust it.”

Steidel said that any city project to mitigate tsunami danger would need to be financed by a locally supported bond measure, so public buy-in is essential. With support for the city hall idea waning, Steidel said the city is now targeting construction of a new evacuation bridge across Ecola Creek.

The existing bridge represents the only viable escape route for downtown residents to reach safer, higher ground in the event of a tsunami. However, a one-two punch of an earthquake and a tsunami would likely cause the bridge to collapse.

Kevin Boyle, project coordinator for , the company hired to conduct a feasibility study, said that in addition to being founded on shallow wood pilings, the existing bridge is held together by weak, steel pins that connect the concrete slab to its foundation.

“The concern is if they have a big earthquake … those could potentially rip the pile cap apart and cause the bridge to collapse into the creek,” Boyle said. “There is just a very high probability of liquefaction of the soils in that area too.”

It has happened before. The 1964 Alaska earthquake sent a tsunami rippling up Ecola Creek, destroying the bridge and causing $250,000 in damage, according to OBEC’s report.

Part of the solution to ensure that doesn’t happen again, Boyle said, is to conduct a full geo-analysis of the soils and drive concrete pilings to necessary depths. But the city first needs to choose from among seven options, which range in scope from a $796,000 floating pedestrian bridge to a $4.76 million replacement bridge.

The first option, which Boyle said was requested by the city, is a floating timber pontoon bridge with a 6-foot-wide deck. That bridge would withstand a large earthquake, but it would not resist a tsunami wave. Boyle said it had another key drawback too.

“For a 6-foot wide bridge, if there’s a panic situation you really create a lot of chaos trying to get people across that in one way,” he said. “You just can’t pass that many people.”

The second option, a 6-foot-wide fixed timber bridge, faces the same issues.

Other options include constructing a 12-foot-wide, fixed, pre-stressed concrete pedestrian bridge; replacing half of the existing bridge with a concrete section; and building a fixed timber suspension bridge.

While some of those options have more merit than others, all share the same hurdle.

“All of those have fairly significant costs associated with them for a small community,” Boyle said. “Cannon Beach is not a community that necessarily has a lot of money.”

The feasibility study alone cost approximately $10,000.

One potentially affordable concept is for a pyramid-shaped berm near the city center. Yumei Wang, a geotechnical engineer at the , said it would cost between $1 million and $1.5 million.

Wang said the berm represents the second draft of a conceptual platform evacuation structure (like a multistory carport for people). It would essentially be a large, sloped dirt mound that people could run up to escape rising waters.

Steidel said City Council had not reviewed that idea yet.

One thing the city is pushing forward though, Steidel said, is creation of stores of food and water around town that people can access in the event of an emergency.

“If all the roads are down and the Willamette Valley is hit hard, we’re not going to see people for quite a while and so we’ll be dependent upon ourselves,” he said.

But Cannon Beach residents also have in their hands the opportunity to choose an evacuation measure.

“One of the things that is difficult about this is there are many ways to skin a cat and to have the community decide on one is difficult,” Wang said.

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If location, location, location is the golden rule of real estate, Cannon Beach Elementary School is in trouble.

The school, like much of Cannon Beach, lies in a tsunami inundation zone expected to be hit sometime within the next 200 years. Indeed, striking along the Cascadia Subduction Zone – 50 miles off the Oregon coast – within the next 50 years.

If that were to happen, experts say the school would collapse.

A 200-year spread makes planning for capital construction expenditures difficult, especially in such a lean economy. But Seaside School District Superintendent Douglas Dougherty is working on a plan that he feels is essential to ensure safety for the district’s students.

“I am optimistic that the (Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development) will understand not only the potential severity that this is something that is inevitable, but that also, with the new research that is coming out, that we need to move our schools as soon as possible,” he said.

Dougherty’s plan is to move four of the district’s five schools – Cannon Beach Elementary, Gearhart Elementary, Broadway Middle and Seaside High – onto a 50-acre campus southeast of the city of Seaside. Dougherty is working with , the property owner, to identify a price tag for the land.

Four of the district’s schools were listed on a 2007 that identified schools at risk of being destroyed by a tsunami. Cannon Beach Elementary was at the top of the list.

“What would happen (during an earthquake) is, as it’s shaking, that building would tend to twist because there’s one wall that’s really weak compared to the other three walls, and it would tend to rack and twist around on itself,” said Jay Raskin, an architect for and a former Cannon Beach mayor. “And there’s nothing really preventing that from happening.”

About two months ago, city officials contracted Raskin and structural engineer Andy Stricker to assess the structural integrity of the school. Raskin said the old, wood-framed classrooms – built before the 1990s, when seismic building codes were adopted – as well as a large, concrete canopy and a tall, brick chimney at the school all would collapse in a seismic event.

That prompted a discussion about whether the district should close the school and move its approximately 80 students to Seaside Heights Elementary nearby.

On Tuesday, Cannon Beach City Council was set to vote on a referendum recommending the school’s closure to the district’s school board, but community members concerned about losing their longtime school persuaded the council to postpone the vote.

“Obviously there was a lot of interest and a lot of discussion needed,” councilor Sam Steidel said.

Steidel said the Cannon Beach Elementary issue was just a small piece of the pie in terms of the measures the city is considering to prepare for an earthquake and tsunami. So far the council has entertained the idea of building vertical evacuation structures, rebuilding the city hall as a tsunami shelter, and constructing a new evacuation bridge across Ecola Creek. Steidel said the council has not yet decided on any one way forward.

Yumei Wang, a geotechnical engineer at the , has been working on earthquake preparedness issues for the state for the past 18 years. She thinks Cannon Beach residents should take a lesson from the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan last year.

“What happened in Japan is the threat that we have here – a very powerful and destructive tsunami in low-lying areas along the coast,” she said.

Wang visited Japan shortly after the tsunami to assess the damage. She said she came across one site in particular that reminded her of Cannon Beach Elementary. It was a school about 2 kilometers upriver in which 70 percent of students and teachers were killed.

“There were little stuffed animals and candy, like little pieces of starburst-type things, as offerings to the people that didn’t make it; little flowers and stuff – it was very sad,” she said.

Cannon Beach Elementary, which sits about a mile up Ecola Creek, is almost a mirror image of that Japanese school, she said.

Wang said that in a seismic event, about 300,000 students would be exposed to life-threatening conditions in approximately 600 Oregon schools. She has narrowed that list down to the 80 most at-risk schools. She said she was not yet ready to release that list, but added that Cannon Beach Elementary was on it.

And while Raskin said that improvements could be made to the elementary school to make it seismically sound, he and Wang feel the best solution is relocation.

“The best way to really address lowering your risk is to move the school out of the tsunami zone,” Wang said. “I’ve seen plenty of buildings that duck and cover and hold means you’re dead under your desk under lots of bricks.”

Dougherty said the school board was waiting for a decision from the city council before deciding whether to close Cannon Beach Elementary. That decision will likely be pushed back now. In the meantime, he’s pushing for the campus idea, which comes with its own hurdles.

A couple of years ago he tried to pass legislation to get $10 million for the project; however, with earmarks in disfavor, the request didn’t even make it out of committee. He said he has not landed money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency either. School construction likely would require voters to approve a major bond.

Dougherty said campus development also would require the DLCD to expand the urban growth boundary to include the land. That could take from six months to six years, but he remains optimistic.

“This is one of those situations where we need to do this sooner than later,” he said. “It is a situation that we’re basically running out of time. We have not experienced this type of natural disaster in our country and so we need proactive assistance with this.”

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A new building designed by in Coos Bay will let the Oregon Coast Community Action organization consolidate many of its services.

“One of the big programs they offer is a Head Start program, and right now they’re spread out across the area,” S|EA project manager Robert Smith said. “They are in smaller buildings that are not the best for lighting and HVAC systems. One of the driving design items was to take those satellite locations, pull them together and house them under one roof.”

The ground floor of the new, 28,700-square-foot Child and Family Resource Center will house seven Head Start classrooms as well as a kitchen, a library, staff offices and meeting rooms. Each classroom will include a studio, and open directly onto an outdoor playground.

“There’s an emphasis on getting as much natural daylight and natural ventilation into classroom spaces as we can,” Smith said. “There’s also higher-performance, forced-air systems so that there is better air quality in the spaces for kids and teachers.”

Daylight and ventilation also will be emphasized on the building’s second floor, where families can participate in classes and services related to housing, energy, weatherization, finances and more. The second floor will hold Head Start administrative offices too.

“There are also a bunch of multiuse areas, where they can have events or the public can rent out,” Smith said.

Use of different materials on exterior sides of the building will minimize the scale, Smith said.

The project team at S|EA includes Smith, principal Sid Scott, designer Rick Berry and intern Brian Morris.

Project consultants are: , structural engineering; , civil engineering; , landscape architecture; , mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering; and JBK Consulting and Design, commercial kitchen design. 

“On the Boards” is a weekly feature that spotlights local firms’ best design work. Submissions from architectural and engineering firms are encouraged. Please email ontheboards@djcoregon.com or call 503-802-7240.

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The Cannon Beach City Council will consider a resolution tonight to permanently close Cannon Beach Elementary due to the high likelihood that it would collapse in the event of an earthquake.

The resolution points at scientists’ predictions that an earthquake with a magnitude of between 8.7 and 9.2 on the Richter scale will likely occur along the Cascadia subduction zone within the next 50 years.

A 2007 report by the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral industries found that if and when an earthquake happens, Cannon Beach Elementary would have a “high potential for collapse.” The resolution further pointed to the fact that each of the school’s classrooms have just one exit, which upon collapsing, would block students and staff from evacuating the building.

That would “significantly decrease the likelihood for survival” considering that a resulting tsunami would reach the school within 15 to 30 minutes from the time of the earthquake.

If the council decides to close the school, students and staff will transfer to Seaside Heights Elementary School, which has the capacity to absorb them, according to the Seaside School District. That move would take place by the beginning of the 2012 school year.

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