Trump Lobbying Effort Delays School Plan for Ambassador Site

Amid persistent lobbying by the organization of developer Donald Trump, an obscure state agency on Tuesday at least temporarily held up Los Angeles school officials’ plans to build a high school on the Ambassador Hotel site.

The victory for Trump, whose company owns the 24-acre site, climaxed a chaotic hearing of the state Allocation Board, which has the power to authorize funds for the school. Instead, the board granted a 60-day delay and called on the Los Angeles Unified School District to work out a compromise with the billionaire developer, who wants to build the nation’s tallest skyscraper on the site.

The decision infuriated Board of Education President Jackie Goldberg, who accused Trump of working behind the scenes to manipulate the governmental process.

“I can’t help but believe there is something unusual going on in this situation, and I think the unusual is Donald Trump,” she said in an angry tirade after the hearing. “They simply have enough money to buy enough lobbyists to go absolutely everywhere and talk to as many people as need to be talked to until they get what they want.”

Cristina Rose, a lobbyist hired by Trump’s company, said she had contacted each of the seven members of the Allocation Board before the meeting to urge them not to approve $120 million for construction of the school. She argued that Trump should have the opportunity to bring a development to the mid-Wilshire area that would rejuvenate the neighborhood.

“There really are competing interests here,” she said. “One is to provide a development on that property that is truly going to revitalize that area. In addition, there is a need to house schoolchildren. What we would like to do is see if there’s a way those competing interests can be worked out.”

For the last five years, Los Angeles school officials have searched for a site on which to build a high school that could serve the 4,000 students now being bused from the area to other schools at a cost of nearly $6 million a year.

When the Ambassador Hotel closed its doors, Goldberg and other officials believed they had finally found the answer. But in recent months--after the school district’s plans were well under way--Trump bought a share of the property and said he would put up a 125-story building on the site.

The school district can take over the property through the power of condemnation, but only if it has the money to pay for the land. And that’s where the state Board of Allocation comes in.

The board, made up of four legislators, two appointees of Gov. George Deukmejian and one appointee of state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, has the authority to grant state funds for school construction, including money from bond measures approved by the voters.

The Los Angeles district has won all the preliminary approvals necessary to qualify for funds from an $800-million bond measure planned for the ballot in June.

But on Tuesday, members of the board balked at the huge price tag of $120 million for just one school. Los Angeles officials estimate that $80 million alone would go for the purchase of the land.

Rose and Barbara Res, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said the development company already has embarked on a detailed search for an alternate site for the school.

One possibility would be to build two smaller schools on different sites--at Beverly and Vermont and at Vermont and Washington--which, they said, could serve even more students than the school planned for the Ambassador Hotel site.

But Goldberg predicted that nothing will come from the negotiations--noting that the company already has announced it has no legal obligation to aid the school district.

The school board president said she expects Trump’s company, Trump Wilshire Associates, to use the next 60 days to organize opposition to the school site among key state and local officials.

As a case in point, Goldberg noted a 10-1 vote of the Los Angeles City Council earlier in the day calling the site inappropriate for a school. City Councilman Nate Holden, a backer of the Trump proposal, personally appeared before the Allocation Board to deliver the message.