Redondo Surplus Schools Conversion on ‘Fast Track’

City and school officials have agreed to push ahead with a joint project to use three surplus school sites for a combination of senior citizen housing, commercial development and public recreation.

Under the plan, up to 300 housing units will be built at the closed McCandless and Andrews schools to help meet what city officials described as a critical need for housing for the elderly, and the Franklin School site will be converted to a city park.

The officials said the plan, worked out in more than seven months of negotiations, represents a compromise between the city--with its need for open space and senior housing--and the financially strapped Redondo Beach City Elementary School District--with its need to get the most money it can from surplus properties.

The city’s willingness to rezone the McCandless and Andrews sites to increase their market value and its offer of financial backing to help attract developers of commercial and subsidized residential property were important factors in the tentative deal from the district’s standpoint.

City Manager Timothy J. Casey said Redondo Beach, in the first year of the project, could allocate about $120,000 in tax revenue from the redevelopment of the former Aviation High School site and the South Bay Galleria shopping center, with the allocation increasing to about $300,000 annually over a five-year period.

In addition, he said, Redondo Beach could earmark up to $400,000 from federal grants for the project and sponsor various tax-exempt municipal bond issues. He said the money from city sources would help ensure subsidized rents for low- and moderate-income seniors for several years, until the project becomes self-supporting.

‘Fast Track’

Casey said the city and district are on a “fast track” to complete the plan and select developers by the end of the year in case legislation pending in Congress restricts or eliminates tax-exempt financing of public projects in 1986.

He said the loss of such financing would drastically increase the cost of the project and make at least some parts of it impossible.

“But if everything goes along as we hope now,” he said, “I think we’ll see some construction starting in the first half of next year.”

Casey hailed the talks with district officials as a “model of what can be accomplished when two jurisdictions work together in harmony to achieve their goals, instead of working against each other.”

He contrasted the smooth course of the negotiations with the “trials and tribulations over Aviation High.”

Community Controversy

The closure of Aviation High in 1982 in the face of declining enrollment in the South Bay Union High School District stirred a bitter community controversy. Several ballot propositions were needed to resolve disputes over how the property should be divided between commercial and recreational uses.

Enrollment in the Redondo Beach elementary district fell from a peak of about 10,000 students in the early 1970s to 3,800 this year. Seven of the district’s 15 schools have been closed.

In the proposed joint project, which received a go-ahead from the City Council last week, the city will convert the Franklin site on Inglewood Avenue to a park. The fate of the buildings will depend on whether they are needed for community activities, officials said. The city is also seeking 6,500 square feet of the Andrews site to expand the so-called Andrews play field on Aviation Way.

Long-Term Leases

The district, in one of the few remaining points of disagreement with the city, wants long-term leases--leaving open the option of using the surplus property for schools in the future--rather than selling the sites outright. District officials also are not convinced that the city needs the entire 6.8-acre Franklin site, now leased to a private school, for park and recreational purposes.

The district’s last appraisal of the three properties indicated a total market value of about $11 million, but rezoning the land to commercial and residential use would considerably enhance that figure, school officials said.

At the 4.3-acre Andrews site, planners envision a commercial section for retail business facing Artesia Boulevard, and up to 153 apartments for seniors on another section fronted by Aviation Way. The school buildings would be torn down to make way for the new development.

At the 4.4-acre McCandless site, the plan calls for razing the school buildings and constructing a community for seniors who need a wide range of support services. A “congregate housing” concept under consideration would provide living quarters of only about 500 square feet for each resident, but extensive space would be provided for dispensing meals and health-care and for social and recreational activities.

Up to 150 congregate units might be built at the McCandless site, but planners noted that the total number of senior dwellings there and at Andrews would depend on the final design of the communities.