Torrance Offer to Buy School Property Rejected

The Torrance school board has rejected the city’s offer to buy part of the former Columbia School site for senior housing, deciding instead to look for a private school willing to lease the existing Columbia buildings.

The Torrance Unified School District board voted 4 to 0 late Monday night, with member John Eubanks absent, to seek bids from private schools willing to pay at least $300,000 annually under a minimum 10-year lease for the three developed acres of the five-acre school. A school also could bid to use the entire campus for a minimum annual payment of $380,000.

District planners based their estimate of the minimum lease payment on a 1988 appraisal, which said the school could be sold for $3 million. Interest from such sale proceeds would bring in about $300,000 each year, planners said.

School board President Owen Griffith said the district has been discussing a possible lease with Switzer Center, a Torrance school for learning-disabled children.

The district also has received inquiries from at least two other schools, including a Japanese private school, he said.

“If a private school can pay a fair rental value, then this will work,” Griffith said. “This has to be something where the school district is not subsidizing a private school” by accepting a below-market rate.

Board members also said that any school wishing to lease the site must pay to restore the buildings to useable condition and assume maintenance during the lease. District planners have estimated that restoration of the buildings, which have been vacant for nearly three years, would cost more than $650,000.

District officials said they will open lease bids at their June 4 meeting.

The lease plan is the latest in a series of options considered for the property, which has been vacant since 1987.

In January, the district invited the city’s Redevelopment Agency to discuss jointly developing 250 apartments for senior citizens at Columbia, which is on 186th Street, just west of Hawthorne Boulevard.

The city said it would buy the site’s 1.5-acre playing field for an unspecified price, but was not interested in entering a lease or joining with the district to develop the property, City Manager LeRoy Jackson said.

Part of the problem with a joint housing development by the school district and the city, Jackson said, is that the district’s primary concern would be profit, while the city’s primary concern would be making the housing affordable.

“The two goals are not necessarily compatible,” he said.

The school board is hesitant to sell the site because state law limits what can be done with the proceeds of a sale, Griffith explained.

“Lease income can go straight into the general fund for regular operations of the schools,” Griffith said. Proceeds from a sale, however, can only be used for capital improvements, he said.

The school site 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 it in 1987.

City Council members warned the district that new zoning for the site, listed as “public use,” probably would be limited to a medium-density residential development, such as a condominium project.

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.

Although the city staged several hearings on the matter, including a neighborhood gathering where residents complained that high-density development would gridlock surrounding streets, the city’s zoning study has not yet been completed.