High Ideals : Schools, Religious Facilities Bloom Atop Sepulveda Pass as Critics Assail Growth

With no master plan and scant public attention, a colony of culture and learning has bloomed along an unlikely stretch of Mulholland Drive atop the Sepulveda Pass.

The one-mile length of rustic parkway straddling the San Diego Freeway has quietly become home to eight private schools in addition to one of the nation’s largest synagogues, a Jewish university and the enormous Bel Air Presbyterian Church, attended by former President Ronald Reagan.

Its genesis represents a marvel of cooperation in the Santa Monica Mountains, scene of so many vitriolic battles between developers and neighboring homeowners.

Over the next year, however, campus expansions and the opening of the massive Skirball Cultural Center will bring new scrutiny to this ridge-top haven of higher education. Mountain advocates are already lamenting the increasing “commercialization” of the Sepulveda Pass and neighbors are fretting over an increase in traffic and visual clutter from nonprofit institutions that pay no property taxes, while social critics wonder whether too many of the city’s cultural resources are being concentrated in a place ill-served by public transportation.

Can more culture and education be a bad thing? That depends on your point of view.

“For many people, a drive through that pass is their only encounter with nature all day,” said Corin Kahn, a land-use attorney who helped write city laws protecting the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains from widespread development. “It’s a real shame to start filling up this unique scenic resource with prominent uses--even if they are museums and schools.”

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The concerns became more immediate recently when the Skirball, a Jewish history museum and arts compound scheduled for a limited opening in October, applied for a license to sell liquor until 2 a.m. In addition, Stephen S. Wise Community High School recently revealed plans to construct a three-story, 80,000-square-foot classroom, theater and gymnasium complex on a Mulholland Drive cliff that borders Sepulveda Boulevard.

In a more limited development, the Curtis School--a well-hidden private elementary and middle school operating on 27 verdant acres adjacent to the San Diego Freeway--two months ago won permission from the city to tear down three-quarters of its current structures and install 23 new classrooms.

The moves have whipped up the worries of longtime champions of the Santa Monica Mountains, who see hard-won gains against development slipping away, especially as the new Getty Center museum and arts complex emerges astride a prominent ridge two miles below the Skirball site.

“These things turn into octopuses--their directors look around and see open space and imagine an expansion,” said Alan Kishbaugh, former president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., a homeowner advocacy group that lobbied for 21 years to win protection for the area. “They start small and end up huge. Now you’ve got these structures trying to compete with the Getty. They don’t seem to realize that if you pave the mountains over, you’ve lost them.”

Concrete and visionaries have conspired to create a niche for education atop the Sepulveda Pass that is uniquely protected by city law: Although institutional and commercial development is banned along the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains under rules of the Mulholland Scenic Parkway Specific Plan, city officials made an exception for this stretch, calling it an “institutional corridor.”

The result is an oasis for schoolchildren and scholars without parallel in the city.

Starting at the western end of the corridor, the schools’ names are a roll call of Los Angeles privilege, innovation and scholarship: Westland. Mirman. Stephen S. Wise. Berkeley Hall. Curtis. The University of Judaism.

Their founders say they represent what the community gets in return for the loss of natural ridgelines and vistas of chaparral.

The most controversial of the planned campus expansions involves Stephen S. Wise Community High School, where the lunch truck offers kosher meals (hamburgers with mayonnaise and cheese on the side), and all 180 students must take Hebrew and a Judaic studies course each semester. Neighbors characterize its temporary buildings as a well-groomed trailer park. Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin aims to raise $25 million over the next five years to build a high school complex on a cliff. The Milken Family Foundation recently announced a $5-million contribution toward that target, enabling groundbreaking to begin in six months, Zeldin said.

The fulfillment of the Reform Jewish community’s dream to build the first major high school for its children in Los Angeles, the campus lies only half a mile from its parent organization, the Stephen S. Wise Temple. Powell’s students also use archives and labs at the nearby University of Judaism, and plan to take advantage of the Skirball Cultural Center, a stone’s throw downhill.

But some critics see too much crowding.

“Enough is enough,” said Barbara Dohrmann, an attorney and 30-year resident of a nearby Mulholland Drive development called Bel-Air Skycrest. “I have nothing against schools, but they are overloading the capability of this little roadway. . . . It takes me 20 minutes to drive a mile and a half to the freeway now, when it used to take five.”

Bruce Powell, who runs the Wise school, said it has has set up car pools to relieve congestion--and all campuses along Mulholland Drive cooperate through an informal committee to stagger operating hours.

Despite such mitigating measures, the cumulative effect of each new building has alarmed activists who work to preserve the mountains for recreation and open space.

It is just that sort of incrementalism that has local residents worried about the Skirball’s application to sell a full line of alcoholic beverages past midnight at its cafe.

The center’s executive director, Cindy Miscikowski, insists that the permit is intended mainly for receptions. Her promise has not cut any ice with some critics, however. A city Planning Department hearing on the liquor license is expected to give the public its first close look at details of planned operations at the 150,000-square-foot museum complex.

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For opponents, the burning issues are not just alcohol and traffic, but a plea for more attention to what has already been lost in an area where just a short time ago, motorists could drive along Sepulveda at night and not see a single light on the slopes of the pass.

Nonetheless, the push of culture away from the core of the city follows irrepressible historic patterns, according to William Fulton, editor of the California Planning and Development Report.

The Skirball’s parent institution, Hebrew Union College, lies near USC in one of the city’s first suburbs of the 1920s. The new cultural center, and the Wise high school, are being established right in the center of the city’s population of 500,000 Jews.

Rabbi Zeldin believes that the Skirball and the high school will bring “dignity and honor” to the mountains, and that they belong there for spiritual reasons. In fact, he notes, the temple has lifted an appropriate quote from the Book of Psalms to decorate the ark that holds its sacred books.

“I will lift mine eyes unto the mountains from whence shall my help come,” reads the tapestry. “My help cometh from the Lord who made heaven and earth.”

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Culture Cluster

Eight private schools, a university, a church, a synagogue and a museum are clustered at the top of the Sepulveda Pass on and near Mulholland Drive--a corridor unique in Los Angeles.

(Schools: Students)

1. Westland School: 125 2. Mirman School: 320 3. Stephen S. Wise Middle School: 160 4. Stephen S. Wise Nursery School: 325 5. Berkeley Hall: 180 6. Stephen S. Wise Community High School: 224 7. Curtis School: 530 8. University of Judaism: 200 9. Stephen S. Wise Elementary School: 700

Institutions

A. Bel Air Presbyterian Church: 1,900 families B. Skirball Cultural Center: 150,000 visitors annually C. Stephen S. Wise Temple: 2,900 families

Source: Individual schools