District Buys College Site for Pico-Union Elementary School

In a move to soften the school crunch in Los Angeles’ most crowded neighborhood, officials announced the purchase of a $6.8-million property in the Pico-Union district Wednesday that they plan to convert into an elementary school by July 2000.

The 2.38-acre site across from MacArthur Park, which formerly housed the Otis College of Art and Design, will accommodate 800 children in kindergarten through fifth grade.

More than 2,500 students from the neighborhood are bused daily to less congested areas, said district Supt. Ruben Zacarias.

School board member Victoria Castro, who represents the largely immigrant community, said she was thrilled.

“The fact that children in the Pico-Union community can go from kindergarten to 12th grade and never attend school in their own community is a tragedy,” she said. “To be able to take children off buses and place them in a classroom in their own community is a major victory.”

The property was owned by the county, which had leased it to Otis for 50 years before the art college moved to a larger facility in Westchester a year and a half ago.

The grassy campus at 2401 Wilshire Blvd. consists of a 22-room classroom building, an art gallery and a smaller facility for ceramic arts.

The school district still needs to determine whether it will use the existing structures or build new ones, Zacarias said.

“We’d like to use what’s already here if it makes sense economically,” he said.

The sale was a windfall for the district, which is scrambling to find sites for new schools in Pico-Union.

While the average elementary school in the Los Angeles Unified School District has 750 students, in Pico-Union the number soars to 2,178, said Gordon Wohlers, assistant supervisor of policy research and development for the district.