Plans Jell for ‘Futuristic’ High School : Education: L.A. Unified board will get details today of a proposal to build career academies, housing and shops on a 35-acre site in the Temple-Beaudry area.

Born from the rubble of two land deal disasters, plans for building the Los Angeles Unified School District’s first new high school in more than 20 years--in the Temple-Beaudry area near Downtown--are finally beginning to jell.

As envisioned by developers and district officials, the school would open in 1999 as a template for the future: Its 5,300-student campus would be divided into seven career academies with emphases ranging from science to tourism; wiring for high-tech equipment will be provided through pre-construction partnerships with businesses and government, and the $65-million construction cost will be financed through a unique public-private partnership that calls for building low-income housing and stores on the 35-acre site.

Even its name seeks to bust the stereotype of an institution--Belmont Learning Complex, not high school.

“More futuristic,” said school board member Victoria Castro, who represents the area.

And a better reflection of the district’s desire to make the urban campus not only a high school and adult school, but also a community hub.

“We’re not talking about a school that closes down every night and the barbed wire goes up,” said Dominic Shambra, district planning and development director. “We’re talking about a true community center.”

Even more important for the community, Castro said, construction of the complex will end the busing of thousands of teen-agers from overcrowded neighborhood schools in Echo Park, Pico-Union, Chinatown, Koreatown and Westlake.

“We’re bringing our kids home,” she said.

Details of the preliminary proposal will be presented to the school board for the first time today, with a vote on whether to begin negotiations with a specific developer scheduled for early September.

Battles loom, however. Some neighborhood opposition to the plan persists, as does litigation filed by owners of the Ambassador Hotel, scene of one of the soured land deals.

In recent weeks, new protests have emerged from a local union disturbed by the development team favored by district staff over two other finalists. The seven-member team’s heaviest hitter, Kajima Corp., designed and holds a controlling interest in the non-union New Otani hotel, where a union membership battle has been raging for two years.

“The union supports the school . . . a lot of our members live in that area and their children are bused out,” said David Koff, senior research analyst for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union. “The issue for us is the suitability of that particular player as a partner with the district.”

Koff began probing Kajima’s past to support the unionization drive, but what he found seemed to extend beyond that effort.

Kajima Corp. is one of Japan’s largest development companies and it has been involved with many major projects in Southern California, including the recently completed Los Angeles County children’s court and the planned Long Beach aquarium.

But, according to national press reports, it has had problems on its home turf growing out of a nationwide investigation of project bidding fraud. That investigation resulted last year in numerous convictions, including those of two former Kajima executives for bribing a local official. As punishment, Kajima was temporarily barred from seeking public contracts in Japan. In addition, a lawsuit was filed in Tokyo last month by 11 survivors of the 1945 Hanaoka incident, in which more than 100 Chinese slave laborers were killed storming the Kajima office in Japan in a thwarted escape attempt. Kajima, among many companies that used such laborers during World War II, apologized five years ago for conscripting nearly 1,000 of the laborers to change the flow of the Hanaoka River in northern Japan.

“When we began to look more closely at the activities of Kajima, we compiled a record which we think has a great deal of merit in assessment of their participation in projects with Los Angeles Unified and others,” Koff said.

Shambra defended the district’s choice, saying Kajima is the firm best able to support the campus’s complicated financing. He described Koff’s concerns as “unfortunate because they’re unrelated” to the current project, and suggested that the union is merely using the issue as leverage to organize the New Otani.

Asked about the bid-rigging convictions and Chinese worker claims, Shambra said: “Every major firm has some problems.”

The neighborhoods served by Belmont High School have been in critical need of more classroom seats for years.

After the 1972 completion of John F. Kennedy High in Granada Hills, the district turned its development attention toward the city’s core, where school enrollments were beginning to climb dramatically. More than two decades later, the Belmont attendance area alone sends 2,600 students onto buses, most of them headed for the San Fernando Valley.

Originally the district had planned to build its next high school in the mid-Wilshire vicinity. But two years ago it abandoned plans to buy the Ambassador Hotel from Donald Trump after protracted arguments over the property’s value. Trump’s company subsequently sued the district for damages, claiming it had unfairly tied up the property in negotiations during profitable years before the Southern California real estate slump.

Earlier this year, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge awarded $3 million in litigation expenses to Trump-Wilshire Associates in their court battle against the district. But the award has no bearing on the lawsuit, which remains to be heard in court.

The state Board of Allocations allowed the district to transfer some of the $50 million earmarked for the mid-Wilshire site to the Temple-Beaudry site purchase. And there, the district benefited from another failed land deal.

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In the 1980s, a developer had cleared at least 300 houses and apartments off the hilly parcel near Downtown in preparation for erecting a commercial and housing development known as Central City West. When the real estate market slowed down, those plans dissolved and the district was able to buy the 24 acres for $30 million. An adjacent 11 acres is being acquired more slowly--as the district condemns properties on it--for about $31 million.

From the beginning, several neighborhood groups were upset about the loss of affordable housing promised in the Central City West plan. The district’s current proposal, which includes about 200 housing units, has muted that criticism some.

Concerns linger about the wisdom of grouping so many teen-agers in one neighborhood. Not only would the new high school become the district’s largest but, also under the plan, the current Belmont High would be converted to house a middle school, a program for newly arrived immigrant teen-agers and the Downtown Business Magnet. Adding their approximately 3,400 students to the expected 5,000-plus enrollment of the new Belmont complex would mean a student population of nearly 9,000 within a few city blocks.

To mitigate that density, district officials propose staggering dismissal times and beefing up police patrols before and after school, but some critics ask whether the disadvantages might still outweigh the benefits.

“Is that good public and urban planning?” asked Bill Mabie, chief aide to state Sen. Richard G. Polanco (D-Los Angeles), who opposes the school plan. “It seems on the face of it rather questionable to have such a dense amount of students in one area, particularly with the problems we’re facing at schools with gangs, with youth violence.”

Just as complex as the social issues are the financing and design of the buildings.

Under the current proposal, the high school would be built atop the L-shaped site, with businesses lining the 1st Street and Beaudry Avenue corner--essentially filling the school’s basement level. Housing would sit at the quietest end of the property, beyond the tennis courts at 1st and Toluca streets.

Many of the high school’s academies, as conceived by panels of teachers, administrators and parents, are designed to capitalize on the school’s proximity to Downtown. Even before it is built, district officials hope to forge relationships with outside groups--for instance, for the law and government academy, they will seek assistance from court, police and local government representatives.

“Partnerships are being set up now so we can plan the curriculum . . . and the buildings, based on their recommendations,” said Linda Del Cueto, district planning consultant.

The bare-bones wish list includes financial contributions for wiring the building for computers in every classroom and for a school library that has full electronic access.

In a complicated musical chairs maneuver aimed at saving money, one academy--emphasizing media and communications--would move into the current Downtown Business Magnet to take advantage of the district’s own television station located there. The business magnet, in turn, would move into Belmont High’s new vocational education building and become a business and technology academy.

The total project will cost an estimated $150 million, but the district would only be responsible for either leasing or buying back the completed school with money it hopes to gain in future state school bond issues or through a combination of state funds and city redevelopment proceeds. The developer would pay for the rest in return for profits from the housing and retail components. In addition, about $15 million of the school’s estimated $65-million cost would be paid through a land lease paid by the developer for the commercial property.

The joint venture behind the project is so unusual that the district has sponsored state legislation, now pending, to formalize it.

“A lot of people in the state and across the country are watching this,” said Raymond Rodriguez, a district planning coordinator. “We’re talking about a radical departure from the way schools were built in the past. . . . This is not a project we can let fail.”

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Proposed High School

Los Angeles Unified hopes to build its first new high school in more than 20 years in the Temple-Beaudry area. The Belmont Learning Complex, planned for a 1999 opening, would feature a 5,300-student campus divided into seven career academies and wired for high-tech equipment. Its $65-million construction cost would be financed through a unique public-private deal that calls for low-income housing and stores on the 35-acre site.

A. New Belmont high school

B. New middle school (now Belmont High)

C. Business and Technology academy

D. Media and communications academy

E. Affordable housing

F. Retail shops