Plans for Pierce Land Offered

Five bidders submitted proposals Tuesday to develop 240 acres of agricultural land at Pierce College, offering proposals ranging from golf driving ranges to a farm for medicinal plants.

The field, however, may be rapidly narrowed. Two of the bids presented to the Los Angeles Community College District did not include the required $250,000 deposit and may be disqualified, said Blair Sillers, assistant to the district chancellor.

Such an elimination would leave three proposals from well-known local developers--all of which involve golf courses and driving ranges. The district may disqualify one of these bidders as well, Sillers said, if it determines the bid would not generate income to the cash-starved college of at least $800,000 annually for 20 years.

A Pierce committee plans to meet Monday to rank the proposals before sending its recommendation to the college president, Thomas said. In conjunction with the college district staff, President E. Bing Inocencio will then submit Pierce’s top choice to the community college district trustees.

At the earliest, the plan could be voted upon at the trustees’ Dec. 16 meeting.

The 240 acres at issue are bounded by Victory Boulevard on the north, the southern edge of the Pierce campus, De Soto Avenue on the west and Stadium Way on the east.

With the college’s expenses running roughly $2.5 million over budget per year, plans for a leased golf course promise to nudge the aging school toward fiscal health, according to Dudley Campbell, the director of the Pierce College Foundation.

As one of the last large open spaces in the San Fernando Valley, the green fields of Pierce have become a pastoral battleground for those with sharply divergent visions of what the land might yield. Now it is up to the college district’s trustees to decide which plan, if any, would provide cash while enhancing the college’s educational program.

Most of the proposals came from people who had already approached Pierce with suggestions for the land, including one group--the Coalition to Save the Farm--that contends the best course is not to develop the parcel at all.

The coalition’s plan to preserve the land as an “agricultural/educational teaching laboratory” was one of those that lacked a deposit, Sillers said. The other came from Hilla Futterman, an instructor who teaches classes on edible wild plants and native plant habitats through the Pierce College Extension program.

Eddie Milligan, a developer of equestrian centers who operates the Hansen Dam Equestrian Center in Lake View Terrace, had previously proposed a golf course and driving range and new agricultural facilities. That idea was unanimously approved by the Pierce College Council last spring.

“Everybody will build a golf course,” Milligan said. “But I just don’t believe anyone else will build what my department intends to build.”

Milligan submitted a bid that includes new animal science and equine science buildings, including an operating room for ailing horses and other large animals. Milligan said his plan, which he said he crafted with associates who have experience building golf courses, would generate at least $1 million annually.

Development partners Chang Ahn and Tom Riley, who suggested a golf education center at Pierce earlier this year, also submitted a plan. Riley said they proposed a golf course, a driving range and a building that would contain a restaurant and banquet hall. He declined to say whether the plan included an agricultural facility or how much revenue it might produce.

An unexpected bid came from Jerry Katell, the developer who already has approval to build a 690,000-square-foot office complex adjacent to Pierce College. Working with Robert Lowe, a real estate executive and old friend from Stanford Business School, Katell proposed building a 300-room hotel, a conference center and a research and development center--all in addition to a golf course and driving range.

“There could be a lot of synergy between the needs of the Pierce College educational program and the needs of these high-technology companies” that would be tenants of the research center, Katell said. He suggested the students could find internships, part-time jobs, and eventually full-time work with these businesses.

Katell said that over 20 years the plan would generate $10 million more than the amount required by the bid request.

A panel of Pierce faculty members, administrators and students met to review the proposals Tuesday afternoon, deciding not to consider the two submitted without deposits, said Carmelita Thomas, the school’s vice president for academic affairs.

Both Futterman, who had proposed using the land to grow medicinal herbs, and Margo Murman, president of the Coalition to Save the Farm, said their proposals did not require deposits. “We’re not proposing to lease the land,” Murman said.