Despite Funding Questions, Board Moves to Build Belmont Learning Center

The Los Angeles Board of Education contracted with a development consortium Monday to build its first full-service high school in two decades, despite lingering questions about how the project would be financed.

If progress continues as planned, the Belmont Learning Center could open within three years on a 35-acre lot northwest of downtown. The 3,600-student school and its domino effect--in which Belmont High would become a middle school--would keep thousands of students off of buses.

“This is a dream come true for our community . . . the American Dream,” said David Lugo, a parent council representative at Belmont High.

The project is envisioned as a joint venture that would be unique among the nation’s public education systems. Under an elaborate agreement still being forged, the Los Angeles Unified School District would pay for the high school and essentially lease space for housing and stores, which would be built and managed by private companies.

In Monday’s 6-0 vote, with one abstention, the district agreed to spend $4 million to continue planning the project. But the cost of building the school--estimated between $60 million and $90 million--remains unknown, as do specific agreements for the housing and commercial projects. The school district paid $61 million for the land near Temple Street and Beaudry Avenue.

“I don’t know the total cost of the project. . . . I don’t know how it will be funded,” said a frustrated Julie Korenstein, the board member who abstained from voting. Several others said they similarly felt unsettled but were reassured that there would be future opportunities to pull out of the project if appropriate financing did not materialize.

A district coordinator of the project said she is working with the developers to scale the school’s construction cost back to $65 million, but “it’s really difficult because the things we’re looking at cutting are what make it architecturally different,” said coordinator Linda Del Cueto.

For instance, Del Cueto said, money could be saved by changing plans to have several stand-alone counseling centers and move them into the school buildings. To cope with a size that counters current trends of building smaller high schools, the Belmont Learning Center is to be constructed as four “houses,” each encompassing two academies, with specialties such as performing arts or travel and tourism.

One past controversy not resurrected at Monday’s meeting was the choice of Kajima International, a Japanese development company, as the major development partner.

Although the company has denied any wrongdoing, school board members previously grilled staff members about accusations that Kajima has been involved with bid-rigging in Japan. And one of its local properties, the New Otani Hotel downtown, is currently being picketed in an alleged discrimination case against workers who tried to organize.

Voiced for the first time Monday were worries about a new environmental study warning of the potential for methane gas leaks because the hillside site is a former oil field. District planning director Dominic Shambra said the district believes the gas pressure can be relieved by keeping one working oil well at the site.

Also unveiled was a tentative agreement with the city of Los Angeles to jointly operate the athletic fields, gymnasium, swimming pool and buildings such as community and child care centers. The agreement, under which the city would pay construction costs and share operating costs, would allow those portions of the school to be open to the community.

Such arrangements have helped generate support in the neighborhood for the Belmont Learning Center. Some neighbors initially were skeptical about the project, especially those evicted from houses and apartments cleared from the Temple/Beaudry lots by a housing developer whose land deal failed before he could make good on promises of replacement housing.

Community meetings to discuss the high school repeatedly turned angry as a coalition of the displaced, their friends and politicians--the United Neighbors of Temple-Beaudry--challenged every fresh proposal.

Again on Monday, activist Mauricia Miranda raised questions about past promises: Would replacement housing ever materialize? Would community jobs?

Miranda lost her rented duplex in the 1980s, when a developer cleared 300 houses and apartments to make way for a commercial and housing development known as Central City West.

“No one ever gives me answers,” Miranda said after the meeting. “But I want to make it clear that I am 100% for the school now . . . that is for the children.”