Students and staff at two Houston ISD elementary schools will be relocated for the upcoming school year while their campuses undergo major renovations funded by federal pandemic relief dollars. 

The district plans to temporarily relocate De Zavala and Franklin elementary students while replacing the HVAC — heating, ventilation and air conditioning — systems at the Greater East End campuses, according to HISD. Those students will spend the year learning at an annex located across the street from Austin High School at 1820 S. Lockwood Drive, roughly 3 miles from their original campuses. 

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“This capital project is a major renovation that requires complete access to the buildings and includes replacing the chiller as well as replacing piping for the entire campus,” the district said in a statement.

The students and personnel are expected to return to De Zavala and Franklin campuses in the fall of 2024. 

In the meantime, the district will provide transportation for students to and from their home campuses, according to HISD. 

HISD held two meetings in late June to discuss the building upgrades and relocation with the school communities. It’s unclear what exactly was shared with families at those meetings. De Zavala serves roughly 450 students and Franklin has 280 students, the vast majority of them Hispanic, according to state data. 

The school board last month approved a contract with Prime Contractors, Inc., to complete the $6.2 million project at De Zavala and $5.9 million renovation at Franklin, according to an agenda for the June 22 meeting. 

The board also approved a contract with American Mechanical Services to complete $1.2 million in HVAC repairs at Ninfa Laurenzo Early Childhood Center, although relocation of students is not required, according to the district. 

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All three projects, totaling no more than $13.4 million, are funded by dollars from the American Rescue Plan Act and the third round of ESSER, or Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief.

The maintenance projects stem from a district-wide facilities assessment completed in 2021 that identified an urgent need to replace and repair poorly functioning HVAC systems and mechanical equipment at several campuses, according to the agenda. The repairs should improve indoor air quality at the renovated campuses. 

The project predates new superintendent Mike Miles and his administration, with the prior administration seeking contractors for the project starting in early March.  

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(Photo provided by Redaptive) Redaptive, which specializes in making commercial and industrial buildings more energy efficient, has relocated its headquarters from San Francisco to Denver. The company has had an office in the Denver area since 2019.

A company that specializes in making the facilities of some of the country’s largest companies more energy efficient has moved its headquarters to Denver.

Redaptive, which describes itself as an energy-as-a-service provider, was formerly based in San Francisco. The company opened an office in the Denver area in 2019 and made the Mile High City its official headquarters in March.

“Denver was, I would say, our HQ2 with San Francisco as our main location,” said Arvin Vohra, CEO of Redaptive.

Making Denver the official headquarters “was a natural fit for us internally,” Vohra said. The office is located at the Tabor Center on 17th Street in downtown Denver.

In recent years, companies from across the country and around the world have relocated their headquarters to Denver. For example, Bay Area company Virta Health moved to Denver last year, as did British company Macs Adventure.

The city’s commitment to sustainability was a big draw for Redaptive. Vohra noted that Denver has a climate protection plan as well as goals for the transition to renewable energy.

Vohra said other factors in the move include Denver’s central location, quality of life, talent pool and area universities. Redaptive hires new employees every week. Vohra expects the current Denver workforce to grow to approximately 100 over the next few months.

The company also has sales offices across the country.

According to Vohra, Redaptive has grown dramatically since opening an office in Denver. In 2019, the company said it managed approximately 1,300 locations with more than 100 million square feet of commercial and industrial facilities in 44 states.

According to the company, Redaptive currently manages 3,000 locations covering approximately 200 million square feet of commercial and industrial properties in 47 states. Of these locations, 46 projects are in Colorado.

“The investment we are looking to make in Denver is very significant,” Vohra said.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board announced in late December that it had invested approximately $200 million in Redaptive.

“The ambition of our investors and the purpose of raising this kind of money is to grow the business dramatically,” Vohra said.

It is more important than ever to make buildings more energy efficient and environmentally responsible, he added.

Buildings are the source of about 40% of the world’s heat-trapping emissions. Reducing these emissions is seen as essential to dealing with climate change. Denver and other Colorado municipalities and the state are updating their building codes to promote energy efficiency and encourage the use of electricity in buildings instead of fossil fuels.

Redaptive works with companies across the country that want to save money by reducing energy use and meeting their own greenhouse gas emission reduction goals. The company designs the project to achieve these goals, prepays for the equipment and construction, maintains the equipment, and measures and verifies the results.

Companies Redaptive has worked with include AT&T, Whirlpool, Goodyear, Cintas and Bank of America.

“Often these customers have hundreds, if not thousands, of facilities,” Vohra said.

To meet their carbon reduction goals, “they just need more people doing more things faster,” he said.

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It’s time to move, says Anthony Meier about his new gallery in Mill Valley, California, directly across from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. He has been in business for four decades, specializing in contemporary masterpieces and operating his gallery from his home in Pacific Heights, San Francisco. Now that his children are grown and his wife wanted a change of scenery, they were looking for more idyllic locations.

“We looked at other cities to the north and a little bit to the east,” he says, while seated on an antique sofa in the private viewing room of his new location, “and nothing had both that energy and that art history that was there and beyond (Last November, Meier was named president of the Art Dealers Association of America.) Despite Marin County’s ritzy reputation, it used to have a reputation for being alternative and countercultural, and modernist artists and Beat poets called it home. Today, Mill Valley is a hill town with upscale boutiques and a gourmet market, and if you order an Uber, a Tesla might turn up.

“I think the other attraction is more space for our artists,” says Lauren Ryan, Meier’s business partner. “We have twice the exhibition space and more space for programs. And our gallery list is robust.” In addition to collaborating with artists like Larry Bell, Gerhard Richter, and Zoe Leonard, they also have younger artists like Sarah Cain.

In the shadow of Mt. Tam at Anthony Meier Courtesy of Anthony Meier, Mill Valley

The renovated gallery in the center of town is 5,000 square feet, approximately half of which is the main gallery and the other half is the private screening room furnished as a living room and study with select antique European furniture. The inaugural exhibit in the main gallery is In the Shadow of Mt. Tam (until March 17), curated by Ryan, and it’s surprisingly varied, showcasing the artists who lived and worked in the area after WWII. The title “Mt. Tam” is Mount Tamalpais, a cone-shaped mountain that stands out in the local landscape.

One of the most famous artists to come to the area was British painter Gordon Onslow Ford, who persuaded fellow artists Wolfgang Paalen and his wife Luchita Hurtado to move to the Bay Area and then buy a home in Mill Valley. They were later joined by Lee Mullican in the house, and the three men formed the group Dynaton, honing a style of surrealism touched by interests in ancient art and cosmic energies. Michael Auping calls them “pre-hippie surrealists” in his catalog essay on “In the shadow of the mountain Tam”.

Works by Paalen, Ford, Mullican and Hurtado are on display, but a small landscape by the latter catches the eye. She and Paalen later separated, married Mullican, and moved to Los Angeles. Her career was very much overshadowed by her husbands until interest in her work exploded after her inclusion on the 2018 Made in LA show at the Hammer Museum. It was then picked up by Hauser & Wirth.

Etel Adnan, Untitled, 1999 Photo by Chris Grunder. Courtesy of Anthony Meier, Mill Valley

Other artworks in the exhibition include works on paper and Masonite by Jay DeFeo, who was taking a break in nearby Larkspur to recover from the rigors of her epic painting The Rose (1966). The gallery entrance features a small painting of Mount Tamalpais by Etel Adnan, the poet and artist who settled in neighboring Sausalito. She once wrote, “When I stand on Mount Tamalpais, I am in the rhythm of the world. Everything seems right the way it is. I am in tune with the stars, for better or for worse.”

Meier’s move follows a turbulent period in the Bay Area art scene, during which some major galleries (like Pace and Gagosian) have moved out entirely, while others like Jessica Silverman have expanded their footprints. The city also gained a contemporary art institute, which opened last fall in the trendy Dogpatch neighborhood, which is also home to many galleries and the center of the Minnesota Street Project.

“Once you’ve spoken to a gallery in the Bay Area, their reach goes beyond a 50 or 100 mile radius,” says Meier. “So they chose to put their stake in the ground in San Francisco, we chose to put our stake in the ground in Mill Valley. We’re obviously closer to the people of the North Bay, but it’s not an uphill drive to visit us from the South Bay.”

He adds, “We didn’t move out of San Francisco, we just expanded our footprint.”

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