Romer May Include Sale of Belmont in Proposals

To win support for his plan to move forward with the Belmont Learning Complex, Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer has broadened the proposal to include seeking buyers for the downtown property, district sources said Thursday.

His plan, first outlined earlier this week, would still ask private companies to propose ways to make the site safe for a school. But it would also invite potential buyers to make bids, an administration source said.

Those buyers would have the choice of completing the project as a high school and leasing it back to the district or converting it to something other than a school.

Romer is expected to present the proposal to the Board of Education behind closed doors Tuesday.

If accepted, Romer’s plan would provide information on a range of options for deciding what to do with the nearly completed school built atop an oil field that emits explosive and toxic gases.

Romer has said that he would like the district to complete the Belmont project, but a majority of board members remain adamant that the site cannot be made safe.

The board voted in January to abandon the school and discontinue a state-supervised study that would have determined what should be done to make the site safe and how much that would cost.

Since then, however, a growing number of community and political leaders have pressed the board to resume the state study.

Unable to win board support for that action, however, Romer this week said he would ask the board to invite private engineering firms to answer the safety question.

Rebuked by several board members for going public with his proposal before thoroughly briefing them, Romer declined to be interviewed Thursday.

The latest proposal to seek buyers drew mixed reaction.

Mike Lansing, one of two dissenters on the board in the decision to kill Belmont, said it makes sense because it would allow the district to find out what the property would sell for.

But board member Valerie Fields, who favors selling the property, said she won’t vote for any plan that includes the option of completing the school. Board members Julie Korenstein and Caprice Young said they would listen to Romer’s proposal, but with skepticism.

“We have to figure out what to do with it,” Korenstein said. “It can’t remain just this monster on the hill.”