CSDR has 68 acres of land from Arlington Ave, almost to Lincoln Avenue, and from Horace Street to Maude Street. The State, however, bought the school land totaling 74.2 acres in 1948. What happened to the six missing acres? The answer will come to you later in this column.
Effective February 1951, Dr Brill was involved with the state architects and planners, sharing his ideas for the proposed school. They agreed to leave the five-acre plot alongside Lincoln Ave with mature orange groves intact. See the yellow circle to pinpoint the back lot.
I am getting off on a tangent with an interesting story from Michael Golightly of Washington DC. Mike was among the first 56 students at the brand-new school. He stayed there until 1959. He remembers the groves surrounded by the chain link fence. He climbed over the fence and gathered a bag of oranges. He and the boys helped themselves make orange Julius in the dorm. They stole sugar from the dining hall. They made the OJ in the bathroom sink and drank it with a straw. The homemade orange Julius was great. He flew to attend the 2018 CSDR Alumni Association reunion. Mike and I are still in periodic touch.
The UCR Agriculture Department had access to the CSDR groves for citrus studies for the next 10-15 years. When UCR no longer conducted its studies at CSDR, the groves were cut down in the mid-1960s and left fallow for the next 20 years.
The Riverside Unified School District looked for a suitable site for a new adult school. They were particularly looking for a good deal and found one at CSDR. They knew a loophole that they could get a 50% discount on land purchase if it was school property. Instead of holding a conversation for the first step with Dr Bob Lennan, who oversaw CSDR, the RUSD superintendent talked with the appropriate officials within the State Department of Education and the Department of General Services.
Dr Lennan had no clue about the land purchase discussions until he learned the bad news from his supervisor, Dr John Flores, in the Fall of 1987. The State of California had sold 5.92 acres of surplus land at the back of the CSDR campus to the Riverside Unified School District for $162,500. The Educational Options Center on the former CSDR lot opened around 1994 to hearing students.
Of course, the secret land purchase struck the CSDR community as shocking and grieving. They wished that they had used the fallow land for something to prevent a forced sale. There had been two proposals for the back lot. First, in 1969, Dr Brill and Dr Lennan discussed the possible use of the back lot for a new DMHU complex for deaf students with disabilities. They soon dropped the idea because the new site would be too far for students with physical challenges to walk to the cafeteria, swimming pool and gym. They decided on the alternative site where the old DMHU complex is now.
The second proposal came twenty years later in 1989 when Dr Ken Randall came to Riverside as the next school chief. He had toured the school in 1973 and had a vision for the back lot. He planned to invite the Riverside deaf community to push for a retirement home center for DHH senior citizens in the undeveloped lot. Retirees could walk to campus as volunteers to work with students and attend school activities. Students, in turn, could walk to the retirement home for work experience. Alas, he arrived at CSDR two years too late.
At left in the above picture is the CSDR Middle School. At right is the Educational Options Center. We can’t cry over spilled milk after losing the six acres in the back. The remaining 68 acres are to be put to good use everywhere now and forever.
Kevin Struxness, ‘76, MA
Editor, CSDR Old Times
26 October 2024
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