School’s Plan for Landmark Sparks Debate

It’s hard to say exactly when it became clear to everyone that the zoning dispute unfolding Thursday on the Westside was anything but routine.

Could it have been the sight of protest banners draped on the walls and gates to $3-million estates in Brentwood? Could it have been the spectacle of well-heeled pickets waving signs to commuters at one of Los Angeles’ busiest intersections?

Or was it the moment that the development hearing was interrupted by a city zoning administrator who begged the crowd of more than 500 to stop talking on their cellular telephones?

The barrage of cellular phone calls was interfering with the electronic sound system at the glitzy West Los Angeles banquet hall rented for the public hearing to determine whether a Sunset Boulevard landmark should be turned into an exclusive girls’ school.

It was a matchup of the rich vs. the rich as operators of the 4-year-old Archer School for Girls debated Brentwood homeowners over plans to convert the 67-year-old Eastern Star Home into classrooms.

By the end of the six-hour hearing, interrupted by catered lunches held in separate rooms by each side, nothing had been settled, however. Daniel Green, an associate zoning administrator presiding over the debate, gave the two sides until July 31 to try to reach a compromise with the help of City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski.

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If that doesn’t work, both sides predicted that Green’s ruling--no matter what it is--will be appealed through the city bureaucracy and the courts.

Supporters of the school, which operates in Pacific Palisades, have purchased the women’s retirement home run by the Order of the Eastern Star for $15 million. They were seeking city permission to spend millions of dollars more to rehabilitate the rambling, Spanish Colonial Revival-style building and construct a new gymnasium and soccer field on a vacant lot.

But homeowners living in estates north of the proposed campus vigorously objected. They complained that school traffic will bring congestion and noise to quiet residential streets and that the proposed 45-foot-tall gym will destroy what’s left of the neighborhood’s ambience.

Both sides came to Thursday’s showdown accompanied by dueling sets of lawyers, traffic consultants and land-use experts--not to mention competing lists of Brentwood residents for and against the development plan.

Archer School operators promised Green that they will spend $1 million to widen nearby intersections and add new traffic lanes that will ease congestion along busy Sunset Boulevard, Barrington Avenue and other streets if the city lets them move to Brentwood.

Those supporting the variance and conditional-use permits needed for the project said that the school proposal is perhaps the city’s last chance to preserve the Eastern Star Home. Designed by turn-of-the-century San Francisco architect William Mosser (famed for his Santa Barbara County Courthouse), the thick-walled structure has an elaborately ornamented interior and lushly landscaped inner courtyard.

But opposing homeowners urged Green to kill the project, warning that the daily movement of 450 junior and senior high school pupils will cause further chaos on the boulevard--possibly endangering teenage drivers themselves trying to turn from Sunset into the campus.

They said the Eastern Star Home could be better used and the community would be better off if the historic building continued as a retirement home or as a residence for visiting scholars at the nearby Getty Center.

The daylong parade of those testifying for and against the project included Calvin Bublin, a handyman for an elderly Brentwood woman who asked him to speak for her in support of the school when she was unexpectedly hospitalized Wednesday night.

William Krisel, a 42-year Brentwood resident and an architect, described the Eastern Star Home as “a treasure” that is likely to be bulldozed and replaced with as many as 112 condominium units and 13 single-family homes if Archer’s request is denied.

But Robert Greenfield, a 15-year Brentwood resident, disagreed. “The traffic problem will do nothing but get worse. This is crazy. Private schools are wonderful, but not here,” he said.

Miscikowski, who supports the Archer request, said she asked for time for more negotiations between the two sides because there has been a lack of “reasonable good faith” from both groups.

“I deeply regret the divisiveness and scars inflicted on our community by this debate,” she said.