Dream dies for retail site at school
A relic of the tortured Belmont Learning Complex project was laid to rest last month when school officials voted to spend $35.9 million to turn an abandoned shopping center shell beneath the school into a training and testing center for teachers.
The commercial space was to have been part of an ambitious re-imagination of what a school could be -- as well as a potential money-generator. In addition to a high school, the site was to have housed a market, retail shops and restaurants, affordable housing and a community center. Those plans fell apart seven years ago.
The new concept is being touted as a long-run money saver that will allow the Los Angeles Unified School District to spend less on hotel conference space and leased offices.
When the school opens next fall under a new name, Vista Hermosa, it will almost certainly have the distinction of being the nation’s most expensive high school, with construction costs in excess of $400 million.
One element of this price tag was the retail development included in the initial design. The retail portion drove the layout of the entire school, situated on a 33-acre site at First Street and Beaudry Avenue just west of the Harbor Freeway downtown.
As originally envisioned, businesses would be at the bottom of an immense concrete structure with parking in the middle and the school sitting on top. The campus itself would stretch almost level into what remained of a steep, expansive hill that would be shorn away.
This multipurpose design grew out of discussions with residents and merchants in the working-class community, said former school board member Victoria M. Castro, who represented the Belmont area during most of the initial planning. “They prioritized some top needs,” she said. “To have a local market was one of them.”
The retail center also meshed with the mission of managers and consultants assigned to the project. They had assembled originally to develop the Ambassador Hotel site, for which they proposed building a 30-story office tower fronting on Wilshire Boulevard with a school in the back. That project became mired in litigation and was shelved, and the team shifted its big thinking to Belmont.
As on Wilshire, the aim of the retail at Belmont was to generate revenue. At that point, in the early 1990s, the severely overcrowded school system had not opened a new comprehensive high school in 20 years.
District officials also were several years away from persuading voters to pass bond issues to fund the nation’s largest school-construction effort.
But Belmont’s extras quickly became an increasing financial burden. For one thing, the design -- created to accommodate the retail shops -- added $6 million to construction costs.
A market remained feasible, but there were squabbles over whether it would have a liquor license and whether it could be nonunion. Major grocers, most of which were unionized, hesitated to become involved because a sister union opposed the nonunion developer. For this and other reasons, the entire project became politically controversial. There also were qualms about whether retail outlets could make a profit in this location, at the bottom of a hill across the street from the freeway. (After the district’s own consulting firm echoed that lack of enthusiasm, gung-ho district managers replaced the firm.)
The most serious blow came with revelations that the district had failed to fully assess environmental problems at the site, an oil field. In January 2000, the school board voted to abandon the half-built school.
When former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer became superintendent in July 2000, he became determined to salvage the massive public investment. But his focus was the school, not the add-ons. Romer prevailed, but when he left the district in 2006, the matter of the 65,000-square-foot shopping center cavity had not been resolved.
“When construction commenced again, there was no specific use identified for the space,” said Stephen Sharr, a director of new construction for L.A. Unified. “It was used for storage of construction materials.”
The notion of a retail center was never revived.
“That’s not a retail corridor,” said John Creer, the district’s director of planning and development. “I don’t know that would ever be real conducive to retail.”
Instead, Creer focused on using the infrastructure to save money.
The school system intends to stop using a leased mid-Wilshire building where it handles interviewing and testing of teaching and non-teaching staff. In addition, the district hopes to trim the $15 million a year spent on renting places to train tens of thousands of employees.
The project will be paid for by certificates of participation -- in essence bonds paid off through the operating budget. Unlike other bonds, they don’t require voter approval.
The annual payments of about $2.9 million over 15 years will be more than offset by lease and rental savings, Creer said. “Hotel space isn’t getting cheaper,” he added. “This is a good business decision.”
The training center should be ready in about three years, but construction won’t begin until the 2,600-seat school above the space opens next fall.
The decision was not universally acclaimed.
While in office, former school board member Mike Lansing proposed that the facility be turned over to after-school programs serving teens.
The Alliance for a Better Community, a local nonprofit group that made finishing Belmont its first priority after it formed in 2000, would have preferred honoring more of the original intent. It advocated using the space for day care and a senior center, with internships and job training for students in a health sciences academy at the school above.
With that setup, “pregnant teens and young moms, who often drop out, could drop the kids off downstairs and go upstairs to a school with the full breadth of curriculum,” said Veronica Melvin, the alliance’s executive director.
But Melvin is pleased to see the school open nevertheless. All along, “we said our priority is a school. Let’s focus on that first. Let’s not let this school be held up by a grocery store.”
