Site for High School

Re “2 Alternative Sites Urged For School,” Nov. 17.

The Twin Plaza Neighborhood Alliance, a grass-roots association organized to represent the homeowners and residents in North Hollywood who live around the Robinsons-May corporate headquarters threatened by the Los Angeles Unified School District, wishes to applaud and to endorse the recommendations made by Robinsons-May in the referenced article.

At our first meeting, Nov. 11, the pros and cons of keeping Robinsons-May as our longtime neighbor or of replacing it with a new high school were presented to the 70 homeowners and residents who attended. When polled, they voted unanimously to preserve Robinsons-May.

Twin Plaza Neighborhood Alliance well understands the urgent need for new schools, but we are appalled at the reckless and ham-handed manner in which board of education member Caprice Young and the LAUSD have attempted to meet this need at the expense both of [Robinsons-May] and of us taxpayers.

When the current plan of the LAUSD to acquire Robinsons-May is balanced against Robinsons-May’s proposal, it is impossible to understand why the LAUSD would not readily agree to Robinsons-May’s proposal as the superior of the two.

Robinsons-May’s eminently sensible proposal, when contrasted with the eminent domain proposal of the LAUSD, has “win-win” written all over it. Twin Plaza Neighborhood Alliance and the homeowners and residents we represent heartily urge the school district to do the better thing, namely, to take advantage of the alternatives suggested by Robinsons-May.

DENISE HALE

Twin Plaza Neighborhood Alliance

North Hollywood

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Re “For L.A. Unified, Finding Clear Site Takes Vision,” Nov. 9.

I hope the suggestion of Karen Robinson-Jacobs in her column, Valley@Work, gets the consideration that it deserves. The Department of Water and Power property at Vanowen Street and Whitsett Avenue could be used to build a high school with the creative thinking she recommends.

If the size of the DWP parcel is inadequate, I would also suggest acquiring the property directly south, across Vanowen, which was recently cleared of a miniature golf course and amusement center. Why not acquire that property before it is developed? A school or part of a school could be built on one side of the street and connected to facilities on the other side by a pedestrian overpass. Or the district could trade the southern property to the city for replacement of soccer fields. Either alternative would be less expensive and less disruptive than ripping out one of the few department stores in the East San Fernando Valley.

LLOYD DENT

Studio City

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It is with extreme difficulty that I bring myself to write this letter concerning the LAUSD proposal to convert the Robinsons-May property in North Hollywood to a high school. It is extremely difficult because anyone who would even consider turning a great revenue-generating facility into a revenue-consuming facility, who would even consider displacing [nearly] 2,000 employees, who would even consider forcing the regional headquarters of a national chain to relocate, cannot be too amenable to reason.

So let me make it simple. Do not further irritate the people of the San Fernando Valley. We are literally at the barricades as it is, and another gaffe by a government body may cause us peasants to revolt!

HOWARD L. BRADBURY

Granada Hills