Homeowners Angry at Plan to Raze Houses for New School

School officials, faced with overcrowded conditions in the area’s elementary schools, are planning to raze nine houses in southwest Pomona to make way for a new campus, angering some homeowners who claim that they cannot afford to move out of the neighborhood.

The school board voted unanimously Tuesday to acquire, through eminent domain, 10 acres of residential land--including one vacant four-acre lot--on the southwest corner of White and Grand avenues and to offer the owners market value for the property. A private firm has appraised the land at a value of $3,035,000.

The site will be used for a 20-classroom elementary school for about 600 students. The school, which will cost $5 million to $6 million to build, is expected to ease the crunch at Lexington, Madison and Mendoza elementary schools in south Pomona. Those schools are either at or over capacity, said William Pitts, acting superintendent of the Pomona Unified School District.

“We’re growing at a rate of 900 students per year,” Pitts said. Although the pupil-to-teacher ratio remains the same as other school districts, he added, “we have less total space for playgrounds and cafeterias. We have to have four or five lunch periods a day.”

In addition to the White/Grand site, the district plans to build an elementary school in the area known as Phillips Ranch, one in Diamond Bar and another on a site yet to be determined.

Plan Assailed

The plan to build a school at White and Grand avenues was assailed by two residents during a public hearing that preceded Tuesday night’s board vote. They said it would be hard to find a place comparable to what they now call home, an area where trim lawns and shady trees grace the modest stucco homes of the primarily Latino neighborhood; children are often seen skateboarding or bicycling down the sidewalks.

Carol Linares, who has lived at 966 W. Grand Ave. for 13 years with her husband and two sons, said the $260,000 the district is offering her family would not compensate for the emotional loss of leaving.

“This land has been in the family for ages. My husband’s grandparents built the house,” Linares said, standing behind her garage in the middle of a spacious back yard. “And we planned to build homes here for our sons.”

“This is our property,” she said. “I don’t think anybody should have the right to take that away from you. The United States is supposed to be the land of the free. So how can they do this?”

Greta Fallon, 90, said she has lived at 1141 S. White Ave. since 1950 and is “too old to be moving somewhere else. I lost my husband here and I want to die in the same place he died.”

Put Off by Attitude

Linares said she was put off by the school district’s attitude when officials sent her a certified letter earlier this year telling her of the plan to build a school where her house was.

“They never came to talk to us in person,” she said. “They just sent out an appraiser.”

But Larry Goshorn, director of facility planning for the district, said officials are doing all they can to help the families relocate, including hiring consultants in Los Angeles County’s real estate division for relocation assistance.

The other seven homeowners have agreed to consider the school district’s offers, although none has formally accepted, Goshorn said. He added that the district will file condemnation claims against any owner refusing to negotiate a price with school officials. Owners would then have a chance to challenge either the amount offered or the appropriateness of the site in court.

Neither Linares nor Fallon would say if they are considering legal action, but the owner of the vacant lot, Chu-Ming Chen, plans to challenge the $955,000 estimated value of his property, according to his attorney.

“That’s totally inadequate,” said Henry Barbosa, a lawyer with Barbosa & Vera in Los Angeles. “It’s worth more than twice that.”

Pitts said he sympathized with the homeowners for the inconvenience of moving but said: “We do have the responsibility to provide education to the children of this community. We have looked at all other possibilities, and this is the last resort.”

Ideal Solution

Although the district studied a number of options to relieve overcrowding, including construction on other sites and expansion of existing campuses, Goshorn said the Grand Avenue location was the most ideal solution. An alternate site, near the intersection of 9th Street and Buena Vista Avenue, was ruled out after school officials discovered that the area was once used as a dump site, posing possible toxic hazards.

Adding classrooms to already congested schools is impractical, Goshorn said, because more than half the classrooms at Mendoza and Westmont schools are temporary structures. At Madison and Lexington, he said, 40% of the rooms are temporary. The district has had to move 200 elementary students to Fremont Junior High School to offset the impact of the burgeoning elementary school population.

Pomona Unified School District includes 22 elementary schools, six junior high schools, three high schools and one continuation school. The area immediately east of the Corona Expressway has experienced the most population growth, Goshorn said, because large vacant lots are being subdivided for new homes.

“What is really scary about the area is the vast amount of vacant property,” he said. “The zoning for the area is for very high density development, and there is enough vacant property to continue expanding for quite some time.”

But one youngster who attends school in the district, 10-year-old “Huero” Salas, won’t be around to witness the growth. His family’s house at 982 Grand Ave. is one of the nine slated for demolition.

While taking a break from skateboarding with his friends last week, Huero said his parents have found a house in Chino, “but I want to stay on this street and go to Westmont.”