Coalition Argues for Ambassador Hotel

A coalition of preservationist, civic, labor and entertainment industry groups on Thursday turned up the heat on Los Angeles school officials to save the historic Ambassador Hotel while transforming it into a complex of badly needed campuses.

The newly formed A+ (Ambassador Plus) Coalition called on the Los Angeles Unified School District to preserve all of the long-closed landmark’s main building, plus its storied Cocoanut Grove nightclub.

Officials of the district, which bought the Wilshire District site in December 2001, are considering five alternatives for using its 24 acres for an elementary, middle school and high school complex for about 4,400 students. The options range from complete demolition to the preservation and renovation for school use of all or parts of the hotel and the attached nightclub. The hotel is where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated the night he won the 1968 California presidential primary, and the nightclub showcased some of the nation’s top entertainers.

Preservationists announced their coalition of more than 40 groups at a news conference as the school district staff prepared to recommend a development plan to the board of education in about three weeks.

“History will be tangible to these students because they will be able to reach out and touch it,” said Linda Dishman, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, the architectural preservationist group that has led the fight for the two options that would preserve the most of the main hotel structure.

Preservationists envision converting the Embassy Ballroom into a library and the once-elegant lobby into a student and community gathering area. The rooms above -- whose occupants included novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and every president from Hoover to Nixon -- would be gutted, reinforced and re-created as modern classrooms. They also want to save the Paul Williams-designed coffee shop.

Costs and time, however, are concerns for the district. Officials say maximum preservation would cost $381 million, about $95 million more than it would to demolish the hotel and build an entirely new campus. Maximum preservation would also take a year longer, they say.

Advocates of saving most of the site acknowledge the costs of saving more of the 83-year-old structure would be greater, but they say that the district’s estimates of the differences are inflated and that the work would take just six months longer. It would yield 25% more classroom space than would the demolish-and-rebuild plan, they said.

They said at least some of the extra costs could be offset with state parks bond funds (the hotel’s expansive lawns could be used for athletic fields and picnic areas), historic preservation tax credits and fundraising drives.

But there are other pressures on the school district, which is trying to build about 120 schools to relieve overcrowding. In November, a community group calling itself RFK-12 called for the hotel’s demolition to build a school for kindergarten through 12th grade as soon as possible.

A former Kennedy aide who was wounded in the assassination said building a new school would be a more fitting tribute to the slain leader than erecting a memorial or preserving the kitchen hallway where he was shot.

About 6,900 school-age children live within half a mile of the site; 3,800 of them are bused to schools in other neighborhoods, according to the district.

“Building the Ambassador school quickly and at a reasonable price is absolutely essential to begin to solve this puzzle,” said Victor Viramontes of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, part of the RFK-12 group.

“Spending school construction money on preserving this hotel building is unacceptable,” Viramontes said. “While we support preservation, we will not do so at the expense of educating our children.”

School Board President Jose Huizar, whose district includes the hotel site, said that, although he appreciates the “historic, social and cultural value” of the Ambassador site, “the educational program is of paramount importance.”

“We will try to balance all the interests,” Huizar said, but he added that he was reluctant to spend more than necessary on the site.

“Every dollar we put into the Ambassador is money we take away from other parts of the district,” Huizar said, “so we have to be very thoughtful about what we do.”

Supt. Roy Romer said he hoped that the board could make its decision in about two months. “It will be a balanced solution,” Romer said of the staff proposal. “That’s the thing we’re reaching for -- an appropriate memory but without an excessive expense.

“We believe we have a balanced solution and a creative one in the works, and we’ll be able to talk about it in about three weeks.”