Bid to Save Old Claremont High School Gains Support

Claremont’s old high school, now largely a collection of small, dark specialty stores and empty classrooms, has long anchored one of the city’s busiest intersections, but few people are venturing inside these days.

Still, people here seem to think the rambling field-stone building, which served as the city’s only high school from 1912 to 1966, has great potential.

In the late 1960s, the property housed a successful restaurant, Griswold’s Smorgasbord, that attracted travelers, including an occasional movie star.

The building’s redevelopment, however, has been held hostage by a series of high-profile bankruptcies and a spat between the owner, Kamran Hekmat, and city officials.

Only half the space for shops is occupied, and the shady parking lot of the bankrupt 150-room Claremont Inn next door is sprouting weeds.

The city has blocked Hekmat’s attempt to get a school to lease one of his buildings.

“I have to go back to the city and find out what they want from me,” Hekmat said. “They could be doing more.”

That may change, with public opinion strongly in support of preserving the old schoolhouse. Claremont residents listed the building as their top priority for city attention in a survey earlier this summer.

Last year, after city planners suggested razing the building to create something new, residents flooded the city with calls to save the schoolhouse.

Preservationists jumped in, viewing the 90-year-old structure as a rare combination of Mediterranean and Spanish colonial architecture.

“We feel very strongly that it is a landmark,” said Ginger Elliott, executive director of Claremont Heritage, an organization dedicated to preserving the city’s history. “We were worried about a mini-mall, which is exactly what we don’t need.”

The city has backed off any talk of razing the schoolhouse, and new plans for the corner are under discussion. Everyone agrees that any plan for the building needs to be coordinated with the hotel next door, a property that goes on sale in Bankruptcy Court on Aug. 24 in Spokane, Wash.

Hekmat bought the old school building in a bankruptcy sale three years ago. He has struggled to fill the space. Just 40% of the first-floor retail area is occupied, although 90% of the upstairs office space is occupied.

“It’s still not enough to make it profitable,” he said.

The building is laid out awkwardly for a commercial structure, with long, dark hallways and small shop spaces. Hekmat estimates that to make money, the building needs at least $3 million for improvements.

But all that’s on hold as the city and Hekmat await a decision on who will end up with the Claremont Inn. The sale may be difficult because the owners still owe $5 million from the original purchase and nearly $800,000 in property taxes. The minimum bid has been set at about $5.8 million, said Scott Miller, manager of economic development for the city.

Historian Judy Wright thinks the city should step in. “It is in the city’s interest to have a hotel [and] this is a perfect redevelopment project,” Wright said.

Claremont has eight colleges and graduate schools but no hotel.

Miller will be there when the inn is auctioned off, but the city won’t bid. City officials are hoping for someone who can unite the various properties on the corner.

Hekmat is pinning a lot of his hopes on a new restaurant, which just opened in the old schoolhouse.

“It’s just never worked there for reasons external to the building,” Elliott said. “It’s not the building’s fault.”