Legalities Bar Skills Center Site : Vocational training: City attorneys have reversed their opinion on building an adult facility on city land. Residents have opposed the center.

Officials have all but abandoned plans for an adult vocational center in East Pasadena since city attorneys discovered that it would be illegal to use the land for such a facility.

The center would have been a joint venture of the city, the school district and Pasadena City College. At first, lawyers for the city said there would be no problem with using the land on Orange Grove Boulevard. Neighbors had fought the plan because they feared a skills center would generate noise and traffic.

But in a quiet turnabout three months ago, city attorneys reversed their original finding. They say they believe that 1932 restrictions on the city-owned land prohibit its use by Pasadena City College.

The legal switch came after the City Council bucked the strong neighborhood sentiment, the college district spent nearly $50,000 to prepare plans for it, and the state was asked for $10 million in funding.

“We may be in the very unfortunate position of having funding for a building but no site,” said William Goldmann, PCC’s director of educational services. The request for funding, meanwhile, remains before the state.

Faced with the legal roadblock, the community college board of trustees is expected to abandon its proposed use of the 8.5-acre parcel at 3000 E. Orange Grove Blvd.

Alternative sites will be discussed at Wednesday’s college board meeting. The 7:30 p.m. meeting will be held at The Circadian, PCC’s faculty lunchroom.

The alternative sites include an abandoned Pasadena Unified School District continuation school on Foothill Boulevard next to the city-owned parcel, Goldmann said.

Kenneth Moye, an East Pasadena resident opposed to using the first city-owned site, said he believes it is unlikely that board members will select the next-door location. However, he said, residents will strongly protest if they do.

The board will also consider whether to seek a long-term lease at the skill center’s present location at McKinley Junior High School, 325 S. Oak Knoll Ave.

But, Goldmann added, the district has no solid plans. “We’re kind of in limbo right now,” he said.

Jeanette Mann, a member of the college board of trustees, said the board acted in good faith and is upset about what she considers the city staff’s initial bad advice.

“It’s a disappointment,” Mann said. “Generally there’s a feeling on the board that we put (in) a lot of money and staff time and board time and president time and really created a lot of bad feeling in the community against the college.”

The college district last year began looking for a new site for its skills center. The 23-year-old center provides courses in vocational training and English as a Second Language, as well as high school equivalency classes for about 7,000 adult students yearly. Most of them are from Northwest Pasadena.

For the past 11 years, the center has been at McKinley under an agreement with the school district. But after the school district said last year it may need to reopen McKinley as a middle school, the college began looking for a new home for the skills center on enough land to accommodate a two-story, 50,000-square-foot building and parking for 407 cars.

The Orange Grove Boulevard site was offered by the city, which has helped fund the center. The land lies underneath Southern California Edison power lines east of Sierra Madre Boulevard. It stretches south from Orange Grove to Foothill Boulevard.

The land was given to the city in 1932 by four property owners. Two of them, whose lots made up 75% of the total, limited the city’s use of the land to parks, streets or flood-control projects.

Those limits were cited last November by neighborhood residents, more than 200 of whom came to City Hall to protest that a center would also bring increased traffic and noise.

But Ted Reynolds, the city’s assistant general counsel, countered that the deed restrictions no longer applied. Bolstered by his opinion, city and college officials proceeded with their plans.

Reynolds said he at first relied on a preliminary title search, which said the restrictions were no longer valid. Not until months later did Reynolds consult with other title companies for a more complete search. He discovered in May that his original view was wrong. He said he initiated the title search after researching other trust deeds in which pre-1952 land-use restrictions were a factor.

The only way the city can get the site’s restrictions lifted now would be to go to court, Reynolds said. But, he added, “it would not be successful if you have a lot of people opposed to using the property.”

The Pasadena college board consulted its own attorneys and reached the same conclusion, Goldmann said.

Opponents who have kept track of the in-house legal shuffling know that the project is dead, said Moye, the East Pasadena resident. But an official proclamation is needed because the silence is harming property owners, he said.

One homeowner trying to sell his home in the area had to lower his price by $15,000 because a prospective buyer feared noise and traffic from the proposed center, Moye said.

Other residents fear that city and college officials are still trying to figure out a way around the legal obstacles connected with the original site. “The city should have been a lot more open, and that’s why we feel there’s a big deception going on,” neighborhood resident Pat McLaughlin said.