TEMPLE-BEAUDRY : Mixed-Use Plan for School Site Proposed

Although the Los Angeles Board of Education will proceed with plans to buy a 24-acre site in Temple-Beaudry for a new school, many residents still oppose the idea of putting another school in their neighborhood.

At a recent community meeting, board member Vickie Castro proposed a mixed-use plan that would set aside four acres for housing around the proposed school site, bounded by Toluca and Colton streets, Beverly Boulevard and Beaudry Avenue, across the street from Belmont High School.

Castro’s proposal calls for 250 to 350 units of housing along Toluca and Colton streets in addition to a school that could accommodate nearly 3,000 students.

To avoid creating a rival high school, the proposed school could be a middle or junior high school combined with a technical school, Castro said. Belmont High School has nearly 4,000 students.

“There are too many children being bused out of this area,” Castro said. “If this site is all housing, where do the children go to school?”

Many neighborhood activists agree that more schools are needed in the Mid-City area south of the Hollywood Freeway, but see the Temple-Beaudry site as the wrong choice.

“It may be a great plan, but not for there,” said Laurrie Garner, representing Concerned Property Owners of Temple-Beaudry. “Leave it out of our area, because we don’t want it.”

The opposition of Garner and others who spoke against the proposal at the meeting is less a matter of NIMBYism (not in my back yard) than a reaction to broken promises about the construction of affordable housing in the area known as Central City West by developers and city planners, they said.

“We remember when the Central City West (development) plan was proposed and all the promises of housing, so presenting a plan doesn’t mean a lot to us,” Garner told Castro. “We’ve been lied to by so many people who try to tell us what we want and what’s best for us.”

Some residents support plans for a school in Temple-Beaudry. David Lugo, representing United Neighbors of Temple-Beaudry, said his group backs Castro’s mixed-use plan.

“We need both things, a school and housing,” he said.

But members of several other community groups, including Grupo Latino Echo Park, L.A. Crusaders and UNO, claim to represent a larger portion of the neighborhood and urged the board to consider alternative sites for a school, including the Ambassador Hotel site, which had been a hot prospect but has now become a legal and financial quagmire.

Barbara Gonzales, president of Grupo Latino Echo Park, said developers have demolished nearly 2,000 housing units in Temple-Beaudry over the years. The school board is “disrespecting us as a community” if they take the $30-million site for a school.

Castro said she wants to move ahead with her mixed-used plan but agreed to ask the school board to consider alternative sites.