District Seeks New Deadline on Land for Schools at Porter Ranch

The Los Angeles school board voted unanimously Thursday to ask the City Council to ease conditions under which the district can buy land for schools from developers of the proposed $2-billion Porter Ranch project.

The resolution asks that developers be required to reserve 22 acres of land, which the district could buy for schools, until at least half of the 3,395 homes and townhouses proposed in the Chatsworth development are built and occupied.

The 1,300-acre development--the largest single project in Los Angeles history--must be approved by the City Council, which is expected to discuss the matter later this month.

Under conditions approved by the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee last month, project developer Nathan Shapell must hold the land only until the end of the year 2000. After that, it can be used for other purposes.

But board member Julie Korenstein, who introduced the motion, said unforeseen delays in construction of the homes until past the deadline could make it impossible for the district to exercise its option to purchase the land. Under the current project conditions, several hundred families--the exact number to be determined by state education officials at the time--with school-age children must move into the new Porter Ranch homes before the district can exercise the option to buy the school sites.

Porter Ranch project representative Paul Clarke said there are no plans to change the council committee’s recommendation. He said it is impossible to predict the project’s completion date.

Under conditions set by the council committee, the Los Angeles Unified School District must also reopen one of two nearby elementary schools that were closed in 1982 because of declining enrollment at the time. The board in its resolution asked that condition be deleted because the closer of the two schools is more than four miles away, too far for youngsters to walk.