Residents Approve Japanese School on Corvallis Property

With polite bows east and west, Studio City homeowners have ended a 1 1/2-year dispute over the future of the former Corvallis High School site.

Residents have endorsed a plan to convert the 46-year-old high school campus into the American branch of a Japanese trade school.

Educators from Osaka Sangyo University in Osaka, Japan, met privately Monday night with 16 Studio City residents to assure them that the satellite campus will be a quiet neighbor.

The university purchased the campus for $9 million from the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Mary order on Nov. 23. School officials plan to immediately begin refurbishing and landscaping the 3.6-acre Laurel Canyon Boulevard site, a block south of Ventura Boulevard.

The religious order closed the high school last year because of declining enrollment. After that, homeowners, developers and Los Angeles city officials argued over what should happen to the site.

While the Japanese purchase ended the threat that the site might be turned into a high-density apartment or condominium development, some homeowners feared that visiting students might be disruptive.

Some residents also were concerned about the way the purchase was handled. The nuns negotiated with a Los Angeles real estate management firm that worked for a New York law firm that was hired by an international trading company that represented the university.

But seven top-level university officials, including its president, showed up for the neighborhood meeting at the home of Polly Ward, president of the Studio City Residents Assn.

Association Vice President Richard Bliven said the 120 Japanese students who will attend classes for 2 months at a time will not have cars. “They’re talking an 8 p.m. curfew on weeknights and 10 p.m. on weekends,” Bliven said.

“I think the Japanese school will be a very good thing,” homeowner Henry Schulz said. “Especially when you consider the alternatives.”