Deadline to Secure Belmont Unmet

A chapter in the tortuous saga of the Belmont Learning Complex should be coming to a close today. But like so many other parts of the story of the $200-million uncompleted downtown high school, this one has become a mess.

Today is the deadline for Temple Beaudry Partners, the developer of Belmont, to secure the project, now more than half completed, against the elements.

But the process of mothballing the project is proving no smoother than building it.

Despite receiving a $2.75-million allowance and three months to prepare the site for suspending construction, Temple Beaudry has not finished sealing windows and walls that remain exposed to weather and the possibility of vandalism, Los Angeles Unified School District officials say.

It remains unclear what will happen next.

The school board had planned to vote today on whether to finally abandon the Belmont project, but has put that decision off until after Thanksgiving to allow the district’s staff to prepare a set of recommendations.

Belmont project director Edwin Weyrauch, a former Navy engineer hired in August to supervise the construction, said that preventing damage during the winter requires boarding up windows and draping sheets of plastic over some of the complex’s four-story walls.

Weyrauch said he put the developer on notice about two weeks ago that its progress was lagging, and he demanded a schedule of what needs to be done to protect the buildings.

“Temple Beaudry Partners has to come back and respond to my letter about their lack of progress,” he said.

When he receives that report, Weyrauch said, he will decide whether to have Temple Beaudry Partners complete the work or retain a new contractor.

In the meantime, Weyrauch said, he expects the developer to continue work Wednesday, but beyond that, he doesn’t know.

“I’ll be looking at it with an eye toward what work is finished, what is remaining and the value of the remaining work,” he said.

The developer’s attorney, Victor Antola, said he could not comment on construction-related issues. A spokesman for Temple Beaudry Partners did not respond to questions.

The difficulties are only the latest problems in Belmont’s troubled history.

The 35-acre campus was nearly half complete early this year when tests ordered by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control found explosive methane and toxic hydrogen sulfide to be pervasive problems that the district did not have adequate plans to mitigate.

After that discovery, portions of the job were put on hold to avoid doing work that might have to be dismantled later to accommodate new mitigation measures.

In July, when three new school board members who had no prior responsibility for Belmont took office, the pace of the project slowed even more and decision-making became even less certain.

The new board had been expected to suspend construction. Instead, it voted to set aside $2.2 million for Temple Beaudry Partners to secure the existing structures by mid-October.

Board President Genethia Hayes said at the time that district staff and legal counsel had advised the board that battening down the project would cost less than a clean break, then estimated at $3.9 million.

In September, the district’s auditor, Don Mullinax, concluded in a report on Belmont that Temple Beaudry Partners misled regulatory agencies about environmental conditions at the construction site at Temple Street and Beaudry Avenue.

He recommended that the district negotiate with the firm over compensation for subsequent problems and, if the talks are not successful, to sue.

As the deadline for weather-proofing the structures approached and the work was still not done, the board tossed in another $550,000 and a time extension.

Two weeks ago, however, the board ordered Temple Beaudry Partners to finish securing the buildings by today.

Weyrauch said he began to grow impatient with the slow pace of work, which he attributed to a lack of motivation.

He said Temple Beaudry Partners has not spent all the money the board set aside, and he assumed the developer would blame a “lack of decision and direction on which way the project was going to go.”