Plan for Middle School Revised

As a developer scaled back plans to build near a proposed high school in North Hollywood, the Los Angeles Unified School District has backed out of working with that developer to build a middle school about two miles away.

School district officials want to open a middle school at Valley Plaza, a shopping center beside the Hollywood Freeway. The school district was negotiating with developer Jerry Snyder for a 1,629-seat school near a retail complex Snyder is already building.

But Snyder wanted $6 million more than the LAUSD was willing to put up for the school, so the district pulled out of the discussions last month, said its chief facilities executive, James A. McConnell.

“Not all deals pencil in the final analysis,” McConnell said. “We realized that we had the ability and the will to do this ourselves.”

Working with a $55-million budget for the project, the school district will negotiate directly with the owners of the nine-acre site and find another builder.

Snyder said the district wanted him to quote a firm price for the school without showing him complete plans.

“Here, all I have is a concept,” Snyder said. “We just couldn’t do that.”

Snyder and partner J. Allen Radford have scaled back a project near the Red Line subway station because of the LAUSD’s plan to build a high school near the development. Snyder and Radford are not working with the school district on that project.

To ease overcrowding and accommodate enrollment growth, L.A. Unified plans to build 85 schools over the next six years. Negotiations over the middle school at Valley Plaza threatened the school’s timetable, said LAUSD spokeswoman Cricket Bauer. The district will begin environmental testing on the site today, she said, and expects to acquire the property by February 2003 and open the school by July 2005.

“We were starting to get held back and we really wanted to get back on track,” Bauer said.

The school district has begun discussions on acquiring the site with its owners and tenants. Businesses on the land include Sears, Roebuck & Co., a Blockbuster video store and a Payless shoe store.

A year-round school at Valley Plaza is intended to accommodate 2,281 students and relieve crowding at two nearby middle schools, Madison and Sun Valley, without angering homeowners and renters by forcing them to move.

“This is the best place to build in this community withouth acquiring any homes,” Bauer said.

Even better, McConnell said, “The beauty of this plan is that it backs up onto a park.”