Hundreds of parishioners celebrated the dedication this weekend of a new Catholic school in Chula Vista.
Bishop Robert Brom performed a formal blessing of the new $5.3 million, 24,000-square-foot De Flores Center center at the St. Rose of Lima parish on Saturday. The center officially opens Sept. 7.
The building will be used for school and religious education programs.
“I’m so excited for the kids,” said Francia Stanton, a parishioner who attended the ceremony. Stanton, who is pregnant, is already looking forward to sending her child to the school.
The two-story, mission-style building was designed by San Diego-based domusstudio architecture and was built by Erickson-Hall Construction Co.
“It’s incredible how much building we could fit onto the tight footprint of this site,” said project architect David Pfeifer. “We have created safe, quiet places for gathering that were severely lacking on the campus before the project had begun.”
The education center has 10 regular classrooms, two preschool classrooms, an enlarged science classroom, a computer lab and a library.
St. Rose of Lima is in downtown Chula Vista and has nearly 6,000 registered families attending the church, making it one of the largest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego.
About 330 kindergartners through eighth-graders will attend the campus. An additional 37 children are enrolled in the preschool program.