Arleta Cool to Idea of High School

The fear is that indifferent teenagers will throw soda cans on the neat lawns and swept porches, or that loud, thumping music will blare from cars.

Or that groups of kids, with big backpacks and attitudes, will cluster around Beachy Avenue, causing cars to slow, dogs to bark and neighbors to hide in their homes.

Such is the future, some Arleta residents say, if the Los Angeles Unified School District acquires and builds a high school on the lot of a former Gemco store.

District officials say the site is ideal for relieving crowding at Monroe, Van Nuys and San Fernando high schools, and would even consider acquiring it through eminent domain.

“We’re very much excited about the [Gemco] location,” Bob Niccum, LAUSD’s director of real estate and asset management, said last week.

The district has said it needs to build 51 new schools, 13 of which would be in the Valley, to cope with a surging student population.

But Mexico City-based food retailer Grupo Gigante, which acquired the 12.6-acre site in June with plans to open a supermarket, says it is pushing ahead with its development, the district’s interest notwithstanding.

Justo Frias, president of Gigante USA, based in Santa Ana and Tijuana, said he hasn’t entered negotiations with the district, although he acknowledged that five or six months ago the LAUSD distributed formal notices to Gigante expressing interest in the land.

School officials said they have contacted Gigante about beginning negotiations and conducting an environmental impact report on the property, the first step in acquiring the land.

Gigante’s “plans right now are to develop the site, because we have not heard anything to make us think that we cannot go forward,” Frias said.

Indeed, the old store, which has been vacant since 1986, is about halfway torn down, with piles of concrete, wood and asphalt ready to be recycled. Graffiti-sprayed walls still stand--but not for long.

In about a month “It will all be gone,” said John Hintz, president of Burbank-based Hintz Enterprises, which is demolishing the site. “I’m not sure what will be built here, but it will be ready.”

Raymond Setterstrom, president of the Arleta Chamber of Commerce and Residents Assn., said the school district hasn’t contacted his group, which strongly favors a shopping center at the site.

“No plans have been presented to the residents about doing something else with the land,” Setterstrom said, “and if you’re going to do this, I think you should have more input from the community.”

School officials say they are early in the process, and meetings with residents, elected officials and local businesses will occur after it is determined that the site meets environmental standards.

Mayor Richard Riordan’s business team, which tries to attract and retain employers, helped broker negotiations between Gigante and the site’s former owners. Frias said last week the city was helping his company obtain the zoning change needed to move forward.

Although the mayor’s office declined to comment on the future of the site, city officials have said they hoped the Gigante store would serve as an anchor for economic development.

Jess Gonzales, 63, a father of three grown children and a grandfather of nine, has lived in his blue and beige Arleta home for 27 years. He misses the Gemco, wants a supermarket and opposes the school.

“If there was an emergency and I needed a light bulb, all I had to do was walk across the street,” he said, adding that a nearby Ralphs closed recently, leaving only one convenient market, a Lucky.

Gonzales and his neighbors said a Gigante store would be convenient and provide the community with jobs. But “a high school . . ., “ he said, pausing to shake his head, “a high school could mean litter, traffic and older kids cruising in their cars with loud music.”

Some neighbors worry that the school district will take their homes away--a prospect the LAUSD’s Niccum called “not likely.”

Because the lot is only about half the ideal acreage, the buildings would probably have several stories, Niccum said. The school would need to serve at least 2,700 students and could open in three to five years.

“Obviously, it would be nice for the community to have a new market,” he said. “But a school should be welcomed. What could be worse for a community than not to have a place to send their children?”

Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar), a former real estate agent in the area, said the Gemco property, with its Van Nuys Boulevard location, is too good to pass up.

“I would be very, very disappointed if the northeast Valley missed out on this opportunity, because there are not going to be too many opportunities like this,” Cardenas said.

He added that LAUSD officials have not moved quickly to address school overcrowding in the northeast Valley after voters approved city and state bond measures, propositions BB and 1A, respectively, to build new schools.

When he talked with LAUSD officials recently, Cardenas said it became obvious to him that the area needed a high school. Officials showed him a map of areas suffering from overcrowding, and almost the entire northeast Valley was shaded yellow, signifying crowding.

Van Nuys High, for instance, is only 50 students short of its 3,600-student capacity, and averages 30 to 35 students for every teacher.

At San Fernando High, with 4,380 students and no room to expand, administrators worry that a lack of space may soon force some teachers to float among classrooms.

But San Fernando Principal Philip Saldivar said the Gemco site might not be roomy enough, noting that his school sits on 33 acres. In five years, he said, a high school there “could be bursting at the seams.”

Times staff writer Miguel Bustillo contributed to this story.