City Will Sell Building to L.A. Unified

Students at crowded high schools in the northeast San Fernando Valley will soon have a little more elbow room after the Los Angeles City Council agreed Friday to sell a Sun Valley office building to the school district for conversion into a new campus.

The new school in the four-story Anthony Office Building at 8501 Arleta Ave. will relieve overcrowding at John H. Francis Polytechnic High School, just across the street, and at San Fernando High in Pacoima and Monroe High in North Hills, school officials said.

“This is 1,800 more classroom seats in the most overcrowded neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley,” school board President Caprice Young said.

School officials hope to open the new campus for 900 students in July, add another 900 students a year later, and eventually--in five to 10 years--expand to 2,500 students, Young said.

The 1,000 students now bused from the East Valley to the West Valley because Polytechnic High School is full will be the first to benefit, Young said.

Although the council voted unanimously to sell the Department of Water and Power building for $50 million to the Los Angeles Unified School District, some members voiced concern the city was not getting a good deal.

The city spent about $75 million to build and later improve the building, but is selling it for what market appraisals say it’s worth.

Also, the DWP will pay $3 million annually to the school district to lease back some space for continued operation of a water-testing lab and telephone communications center in the building. Additional costs may be incurred later, when about 900 DWP workers are moved out of the building.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who was absent Friday, had held the deal up for weeks because of concern that the city is selling the building even as it is entering leases for space in private buildings to house other city agencies.

“I wasn’t thrilled with the numbers,” Councilwoman Janice Hahn said. “I think we might be getting a ‘D’ on our effort on this first transaction.”

While Hahn and other council members said the deal could have been better, they agreed that the need to address a crisis of crowded schools in Los Angeles more than justifies the sale.

“We’ve heard increasingly over the last couple of years about the need for the school district to build more schools,” council President Alex Padilla said. “This is the first significant step, the first test, and an example of how the city and schools can work together.”

Councilman Joel Wachs, whose district includes the office site, blamed the DWP for building the structure during a period of rampant spending. The building has about 900 employees remaining from a peak work force of about 2,000.

“It [DWP] never needed this facility. It was excessive, in my opinion,” Wachs said. “We are finally finding a good use for it.”

Because some terms are still being worked out, an ordinance to complete the sale must be returned to the council next week for a final vote.

The building is expected to open as a high school by July, faster than the three to five years it would take to build a new campus from scratch.

Burgeoning enrollments have forced many schools onto year-round schedules and unless more dramatic action is taken soon, school officials say, conditions are likely to get worse as enrollment continues to grow.

School officials say the district needs five new Valley high schools and 10 schools elsewhere to accommodate an expected 23,000 more students by 2006.