Torrance School Board Invites City Panel to Talk About Columbia Site

Torrance school board officials have invited the city’s Redevelopment Agency to join in discussions about developing 250 apartments for senior citizens at the former Columbia School site.

The invitation, approved late Monday by Torrance Unified School District board members, asks the city to begin discussing a senior housing project similar to a 135-unit building being constructed at the former Andrews Elementary School in Redondo Beach.

Although the action marks the district’s first formal step toward redeveloping the Columbia School campus, officials said it does not preclude them from doing something entirely different with the five-acre site if an agreement cannot be reached with the city.

“We’re just trying to see if the Torrance Redevelopment Agency would like to participate in something like this,” district business manager Harvey Oelkers said. “Preliminary indications are that they would.”

Two nearby residents warned during the meeting that they would oppose any high-density development, such as the 250-unit project.

Senior citizens “may not own and drive a lot of cars, but they have a lot of people coming to visit them,” said Bill Lippert, who owns a home across the street from the vacant school. “We have parking and traffic problems already.”

Columbia School, located on 186th Street just west of Hawthorne Boulevard, has been a source of contention between the district and the city since district officials began talking about building high-density apartments there shortly after closing the school in 1987.

City Council members warned the district that new zoning for the site, currently listed as “public use,” probably would be limited to a medium-density residential development, such as a condominium project. The council also suggested that the site might be suitable for senior housing and ordered city planners to study what zoning would be most appropriate for Columbia.

The site became the city’s first vacant school to be considered for rezoning before being sold or leased for development. In the past, city officials have waited until a developer took control of a closed school to discuss what may be built there.

The city staged several hearings on the matter, including a forum where neighbors complained that high-density development would cause a gridlock on surrounding streets. The city’s zoning study has not yet been completed.

Oelkers said district staff members decided not to recommend the outright sale of Columbia because state law forbids districts to use the proceeds of a land sale for anything but capital improvements. Some interest that would be earned on the proceeds could be used for school operations, but that allowance in the law is being phased out.

City officials and neighbors had asked that the district look into leasing the existing school buildings to a private school or day-care program, leaving only Columbia’s playgrounds and field for development. Oelkers estimated, however, that restoring the buildings to usable condition would cost more than $650,000.

“We would have to find a lessee that would be in a position to bear that cost and continuing operational costs,” he said.

In addition, the chunk of open land remaining for development might be too small for a profitable project.

Instead, district planners said a senior housing project built on the entire site might bring in the most money.

“There are a million different ways you could structure how this would actually be done,” Oelkers said.

He called Redondo Beach’s Andrews School development “a model project” for what the district has in mind.

A complex series of agreements between the city of Redondo Beach, the school district and a private developer, Calmark Corp., has allowed construction of 135 senior housing units at the Andrews site on Artesia Boulevard just east of Aviation Boulevard.

Under the agreement, Calmark has agreed to subsidize 27 units for low-income seniors and will pay the district at least $120,000 a year for 60 years, based on a percentage of the rent it collects, in return for use of the site. In addition, Calmark helped pay for improvements at a nearby park.

The city will use federal and state housing funds to subsidize 40 more units for low- and moderate-income seniors.

To help keep rents low, the city allowed more units and less parking than would normally be required for a residential development.

Liz Rojas, an assistant to the Torrance city manager, said it is too early to say what the city might be willing to do to put senior housing on the Columbia site.

“Until we see what they have in mind, we would just be shooting from the hip,” she said.