Former Belmont High Czar Spreads the Blame

He has become the whipping boy for the Belmont Learning Complex, the symbolic effigy to be flogged every time something goes awry with the most ambitious school building project undertaken by the Los Angeles schools.

But Dominic L. Shambra, the man most closely identified with the construction of Los Angeles Unified’s newest high school, says he’s had enough. He wants you to know he isn’t the only one responsible for decisions that have sparked recent cries from here to Sacramento for a criminal probe.

“It wasn’t like I was left on my own to do whatever the hell I wanted to do,” said Shambra, 60, who retired as development guru for the nearly 700,000-student school system last February.

“They gave me that position, created that position for me to do exactly what I did,” Shambra said, referring to school board members, the superintendent and other top officials. “They were always informed, they were always invited to participate. In some ways, they never participated because they wanted to protect [themselves].”

Is Dom Shambra being hung out to dry?

That question has emerged in recent weeks, as controversy once again erupted over Belmont. The Times disclosed that the district may have to pay millions of dollars extra to find and fix ground contamination because top officials failed to act on a 1994 memo that warned they had bought the 24-acre parcel without adequate environmental testing.

The land--which includes an abandoned oil field--has a number of potential chemical hazards, including such carcinogens as benzene; seepage of potentially explosive methane; and unknown oil products floating on shallow ground water. Construction will probably be delayed for testing and remediation.

The revelation started a firestorm, prompting calls for a criminal probe and promises by state lawmakers to hold investigatory hearings next month. The district fired its outside counsel on the project and school officials were quick to point the finger at Shambra. A spokesman characterized the actions of Shambra and his consultants as “autonomous” and “independent.”

“Who’s responsible?” said General Counsel Richard K. Mason, who received the 1994 memo, as did other top officials. “I think Dom Shambra was responsible for the successful consummation of the Belmont project.”

But Shambra is now pointing the finger back. The former planning director said he conferred so often with Mason on all aspects of the Belmont project that he considered the district’s top attorney to be his “unannounced supervisor.”

“There wasn’t one thing that I didn’t do that Mason wasn’t involved with. Ever. Ever,” he said. “He approved everything I did.”

On Friday, Mason agreed that he “wasn’t in Siberia while this was happening,” that Belmont was reviewed many times by different people, including an oversight committee. Yet he continued to maintain that the “primary administrative responsibility” for what happened at Belmont was invested in the former planning director and his team of consultants.

“We trusted his team and we put our faith in his team.”

Despite the latest uproar, Shambra says he believes the environmental risks at the site have been overstated and maintains that the project is a sound one.

Shambra played a central role as point man and heavy with the Belmont project.

It was a familiar one for a onetime playground director and elementary schoolteacher who rose through the ranks, in part, because of his willingness to butt heads with controversy.

Shambra was a consummate insider, one who developed deep connections during his 37 years at L.A. Unified. His first boss as playground supervisor was Bill Anton--destined to become a superintendent. Anton was married at Shambra’s San Gabriel home and Shambra served as best man.

And it was from within the system, Shambra said, that he learned the tactics that he would use at Belmont.

“We’ve always operated on the philosophy that you put the train on the track and you just keep it going,” he said. “You don’t allow it to be pulled off on spurs.”

The approach served him well when he was tapped during the early 1980s for the unpopular task of shuttering nearly two dozen schools in the San Fernando Valley because of declining enrollment. He held public hearings brimming with angry parents.

“I was the guy they screamed at,” Shambra said.

Over time, however, Shambra evolved from an apologist to a scourge of district bureaucrats, whom he considers obstructionists and slow-moving. At 6-feet-1, 240 pounds, with thick wrists and a face born for a scowl, he is a self-described “gruff old Sicilian.”

“I was Ivan the Terrible with the bureaucrats to get them to do things,” said Shambra, who can curse up a storm. “They’d say I was a bully. Yeah, I was. But they were wimps.”

Shambra would eventually be charged with the job of finding “innovative” ways to make money off the cash-starved district’s assets. With no formal education in finance or business, Shambra hired pricey consultants to help negotiate with private developers for public-private joint ventures.

A couple, like the combination medical center and school in Van Nuys, never got off the drawing boards, according to a legislative report. The eight-story Grand Avenue parking garage netted $736,000 from a development firm until it defaulted on its payments. Then there was the ill-fated attempt to build a high school and retail center at the Ambassador Hotel in Mid-Wilshire, a deal in which Shambra played a supporting part.

The fact that Shambra continued to hold his job despite the spotty results made him “the original Teflon man,” said C. Douglas Brown, the district’s facilities director until he retired in December 1994.

“He was a user of people and a user of responsibility,” said Brown, who was considered Shambra’s chief rival. “It was always somebody else’s fault if anything went wrong. And if things went right, he was always trying to elbow his way to the front to get credit.”

In 1994, when then-Supt. Sid Thompson named him district planning and development director, Shambra was given charge of Belmont. He had already played a prominent role, helping secure $30 million in state money to buy the land at the corner of 1st Street and Beaudry Avenue.

Under Shambra’s direction, the hope for a new building to replace aging Belmont High School--and thus end busing for thousands of students--transmogrified into an ambitious scheme to build four academies, 78,000 square feet of retail space, up to 300 units of low-income housing, an aquatic center and a community gym in the predominantly Latino neighborhood west of downtown, off the Harbor Freeway.

Shambra signed the request for proposals, oversaw selection of the developers, helped hammer out the primary $86-million school construction contract and ran public presentations to the board, including the one that won approval to start building.

And it was Shambra who played tough guy to keep the project together after the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union began mounting political attacks because the prime contractor was Kajima International, target of a unionizing drive unrelated to the school.

Shambra hung in when housing plans fell apart and negotiations over the retail component stalled. He soldiered past objections about choosing the most expensive proposal, as well as accusations that his key consultant on the selection committee had business ties elsewhere with the architect from the winning team. He snarled when it was suggested that he had a conflict because he had started dating one of his consultants months after his wife died.

He kept going as the press dubbed his project the “Taj Mahal” and pilloried him as “The Last Dom.” He dashed off an angry denial when Assemblyman Scott Wildman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, accused him of destroying documents that were being sought for a legislative investigation.

Despite his lead role, Shambra insists he was no rogue administrator, as some have implied.

By then, Shambra said, he had been worn down. He decided to retire, hoping to get out of the line of fire. But when the controversy kicked up again this month, he said he was appalled to find a television crew knocking on his door, cameras ready.

Shambra explained that when he and others received a 1994 memo from the district’s real estate director warning about inadequate environmental study, it was a group decision to forge on with construction and deal with contamination as it was discovered.

Thompson, the former superintendent, agrees.

“To say now that was a faulty decision and to blame Shambra and Shambra alone is wrong,” Thompson said. “I don’t think Shambra should take all the heat. I believe that I was the superintendent at the time and I’ll take some of the heat.”