New Suisn City housing development whose design will fit in with the surrounding Victorian and Italianate-style homes

March 8, 2007

Old Crystal buildings going down

By Ian Thompson


SUISUN CITY - The W.U. Goodman Gym - with its 8-foot-tall cougar staring out onto Cordelia Road - will be the last of Crystal Middle School's buildings to be destroyed this week.

Wrecking crews earlier this week started tearing down the half-century-old buildings that had been Crystal Elementary School and later Crystal Middle School.

The site itself served as home for Suisun City's main school for more than 100 years, with the current buildings going up in the 1950s.

The school has lain vacant for the last two years, generating frequent false alarms for the police department and providing an attraction for vagrants, according to neighbors.

Its present owners, the city's master developer Main Street West, plans to clear off the site and put in a housing development whose design will fit in with the surrounding Victorian and Italianate-style homes.

Suisun City's Redevelopment Agency marketed the land on behalf of the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District, selling it to Main Street West for $2.5 million.

The Crystal School site is one of a dozen sites throughout Suisun City's old town which Main Street West is expected to build on.

Main Street broke ground in September on two retail and commercial projects flanking Solano Street on Main Street's east side. The Suisun City Council just approved construction of a 102-room hotel on land next to One Harbor Center.

Reach Ian Thompson at 427-6976 or at ithompson@dailyrepublic.net.