Plan for Arts Campus Questioned

The high school planned for downtown Los Angeles originally came with a no-frills budget and a clear mandate: Ease overcrowding for students packed into nearby Belmont High School.

Then billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad lobbied Los Angeles school officials to redesign the Grand Avenue campus into an elaborate visual and performing arts school. The new proposal -- including a soaring tower, a conical library, two theaters and exhibition space -- would cost taxpayers at least $18 million extra and delay construction by a year.

Now, as architects draw up their final plans, some school district officials and watchdog groups question whether Broad has intervened in the school project to advance his much-heralded plans for reviving downtown’s Grand Avenue.

The head of a citizens committee overseeing school construction complained that Broad, a generous donor to education, has been given an inordinate say in a taxpayer-funded project, compromising the Los Angeles Unified School District’s independence.

“The concern is that ... because of [Broad’s] position, wealth and clout, his views carry more weight than they should,” said Robert Garcia, chairman of the district’s School Construction Bond Citizens Oversight Committee. “I think Broad expresses his preferences and then the district carries them out.”

Broad adamantly denied the allegation, saying his only motive was to help the school district build a marquee campus.

His involvement in the design of the $87-million school is under investigation by Los Angeles Unified Inspector General Don Mullinax, who is looking into allegations of “undue influence by outside parties” at the site, according to internal district documents and sources. Mullinax, who is broadly charged with weeding out waste, fraud and abuse in the school district, would not comment further on his inquiry.

But district records and interviews with several current and former district officials indicate that Broad played a significant behind-the-scenes role in having the school redesigned and in choosing a renowned Austrian architectural firm for the job.

District officials in charge of the school met with outside arts experts at the Broad Foundation’s Westwood headquarters to interview new designers. Later, the district signed an agreement with Broad, accepting up to $600,000 as an interest-free loan from his foundation and pledging to consult the foundation over selection of the architect.

Legal experts say Broad broke no laws, noting that private citizens are allowed to lobby public agencies.

“I see influence. I do not see improper influence,” said Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles research organization. “The school board [is] going to have to ... bite the bullet and convince the public that they spent taxpayers money appropriately.” The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. is skeptical, given the financial constraints on a district struggling to build more than 100 campuses to relieve severe overcrowding.

“The fact that they are using taxpayer funds for something way beyond the normal scope of [school] construction is an affront to taxpayers,” said Jon Coupal, the association’s president. “We simply do not see how this can be justified.”

Broad and L.A. Unified Supt. Roy Romer strongly defended the redesign of the school, saying they are capitalizing on a rare opportunity to build a sophisticated arts campus for low-income students on a street lined with some of the city’s most prestigious cultural institutions.

“I want to do things that are good for the community,” Broad said. “I think it’s high time that this district have a number of schools that are flagships they can be proud of.”

Broad said his philanthropic foundation has committed $1.9 million toward the school’s operating budget for the first several years -- an unusually large private donation. But he said he believed construction of the campus, as in the case of other public schools, should be financed by public funds.

Broad and Romer insisted that the district has controlled the project from the outset, including the decision last year to engage the Coop Himmelblau architectural firm of Vienna to redesign the school. The firm has proposed an elegant campus, with flourishes not typical of public schools. The final design is to be reviewed for approval by district administrators in November. “The district wanted to do it,” Broad said of the decision to turn the school into an arts campus. “I am an advocate and supporter of what they are doing.”

It is unclear who hatched the idea of building an arts school on Grand Avenue, at the site of the former district headquarters. Richard Alonzo, local superintendent in charge of downtown schools, had begun meeting with civic leaders to push for an arts high school more than two years ago. But records and interviews show that the redesign only took off once Broad became involved.

District leaders said they made two attempts to persuade Broad to contribute to the school’s construction. Board President Jose Huizar, who represents the downtown area, wrote a letter nearly two years ago asking Broad to support the arts portion of the campus, and Romer asked Broad to pay for the tower proposed by the new architects. The two officials said they never heard back from him.

Broad’s involvement in the school project is the latest effort by him and his foundation to play a role in Los Angeles Unified. In recent years, he has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to school board candidates. He also has played a broader role as a school philanthropist, donating nearly $22 million over the last three years to local educational causes and organizations.

At times, his involvement has been controversial. Last year, Occidental College trustees told The Times that Broad had offered the school $10 million if the college’s president, Theodore Mitchell, would run for the Los Angeles school board. A school board incumbent said Broad was part of an effort to treat “this school district like a banana republic.” Broad said the proposed gift was not tied to the candidacy of Mitchell, who decided not to run. The money was never given.

Broad is also a driving force behind plans to revive Grand Avenue as an international boulevard. Broad and other philanthropists have given millions of dollars for two of the centerpieces in the effort: the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The street also would feature office towers, housing complexes and restaurants amid such cultural treasures as the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Broad, who said he does not stand to gain financially from the revival, said the arts high school was never envisioned as part of the larger Grand Avenue plan.

Still, he said of the school site, “If you’re going to have a good piece of architecture anywhere, it should be there.”

The arts campus would serve a community that has waited more than a decade for a new high school. It is one of four new specialty high schools planned for the downtown area.

The school had humbler beginnings. About three years ago, the district hired a prominent local architectural firm, AC Martin Partners, which designed a traditional campus with low-slung buildings.

As those plans moved forward, Broad began talking informally with district officials about expanding the school’s mission. In the summer of 2001, the Broad Foundation paid to fly staff members from New York’s famed La Guardia arts high school to Los Angeles to meet with district officials and AC Martin.

Later that year, Broad Foundation Director Veronica Davey met with Huizar, then the school board vice president. Huizar said the two discussed the “possible role of the Broad Foundation in the development of the ... Grand Avenue site as a true performing arts high school,” according to a letter he sent to Broad.

Huizar, initially cool to the idea of an arts campus, was persuaded that it would be a plus for downtown students. So he sponsored a school board action in December 2001, asking AC Martin to do a study of what it would take to convert the traditional campus into an arts high school.

That study concluded that the project would delay the school’s opening by a year and add about $18 million to the cost. That would bring the total cost of the school to $87 million, to be paid through voter-approved bonds. As the study was underway, the Broad Foundation paid to fly two AC Martin architects and school district officials to Houston to tour arts campuses there.

By the summer of 2002, the district and the Broad Foundation had set out to find a new designer, documents and interviews show. But no one told AC Martin Partners, according to Chris Martin, the firm’s chief executive.

In August 2002, three L.A. Unified facilities executives and two outside architectural experts met at the Broad Foundation’s Westwood headquarters to interview five architectural firms, including Coop Himmelblau.

One of the attendees, Sylvia Lavin, who heads UCLA’s department of architecture and urban design, said Broad did not attend the two days of interviews but made his views clear. “He wanted to make sure that the field from which LAUSD was selecting guaranteed an inventive and culturally significant approach,” she said.

Martin said his firm was waiting to start the redesign when the district’s senior project manager, Ivan Kesian, informed him that he wanted to bring in an outside designer to help out.

“The whole selection of these other design architects was kept secret from us,” Martin said.

Kesian, who no longer works for the school district, did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

Martin said that Kesian and Jim McConnell, the district’s facilities chief, asked him to remain on the project as the “executive architect,” overseeing the new designer. Martin declined.

“I said to Jim, ‘You are turning this into a Disney Hall of high schools,’ ” Martin recalled.

McConnell told The Times he was unaware of the partnership between the district and the Broad Foundation -- and the interviews at the foundation -- until Kesian told him about it in August 2002.

McConnell said he subsequently removed Kesian from the project, partly because he felt Kesian was responding to “pressure from the Broad Foundation” and wasn’t “protecting the district’s interests well enough.”

“I thought it was bad judgment to hold this review in the office of Eli Broad,” McConnell said. “That was my seminal concern.”

During this time, the Broad Foundation agreed to loan the district $600,000, interest-free, to get started on the new design. In exchange, the district agreed to consult with the Broad Foundation in selecting a new architect and to coordinate publicity for the project, according to the agreement.

The document also said that L.A. Unified would have “sole and exclusive authority” to pick the architect and maintain control over the project.

Still, McConnell said he was uncomfortable with the decision to accept the loan, and returned an initial outlay of $224,000 to the Broad Foundation in January.

But by that time, the district had identified two new architectural firms for the project -- Coop Himmelblau as designer and another firm to oversee the work. The school is set to open in September 2006.

Romer said he had no regrets and believed that Broad had been a big help.

“I don’t feel that I am being manipulated or the district is being manipulated,” he said. “I was always clear with Eli and others that we had to make decisions and manage this project.”