College faces neighborhood opposition to its expansion

The college sits on a crest in Rancho Palos Verdes with a multimillion-dollar view of the ocean. But it is a view that students living in the dorms don’t see. Instead of being on campus, student housing is six miles away in San Pedro.

Marymount College has tried to remedy that situation for nine years. But because of opposition from neighbors who say that moving student housing there would bring too much noise and traffic, no students yet live on campus.

The fight over the dorms has gone on for so long that none of the city’s seven planning commissioners was there at the beginning. Adding a twist to the process, three current commissioners have recused themselves from voting on the project because of previous statements they had made regarding the project.

Most recently, on the recommendation of the Planning Commission in April, Marymount officials dropped their proposal to build the dorms -- at least for the moment -- instead going forward with a more than $40-million project that includes a gym, a new library and more parking.

But residents oppose the new expansion plan, and there is new talk of lawsuits to block it.

“When things are so unreasonable you can’t develop property the way you want, you have to at least let all options remain open,” said Michael Brophy, president of the two-year Catholic college. “To the best of my knowledge, we’ve never threatened legal action. That being said, we’re in [the] hands of excellent land-use attorneys.”

The group that has led opposition to the project, Concerned Citizens Coalition/Marymount Expansion, hired its own attorney in March.

“We hope we don’t have to file a lawsuit, but if we do, we will,” said Lois Karp, the organization’s president.

The college expects the Planning Commission to approve the project Tuesday. The decision can be appealed to the City Council.

Marymount moved to its 26-acre location in 1975. It is one of the few two-year private liberal arts colleges in California. Tuition costs $23,352 and room and board is $10,290.

A shuttle runs between the campus and the San Pedro residences, where 60% of the students live. One dorm is former Navy town houses where 300 students live, the other an apartment building the college owns. The cafeteria is on campus.

The college’s agreement with Rancho Palos Verdes caps the student body just shy of 800, although last semester enrollment was closer to 550. The new construction would not increase Marymount’s size, and more than two-thirds of the campus would remain open space.

“One of the challenges we have is students aren’t on our campus, so they’re not experiencing the kind of experience many of us had, the idea of living in residence, which is centuries old,” Brophy said.

Marymount originally wanted to build three two-story dorms for a total of 300 students, with a view of the Pacific, on a bluff above Palos Verdes Drive East, where a soccer field sits. A sign on the chain-link fence at the edge of the hill announces that rattlesnakes live in the area.

Because of neighborhood opposition, the plan was scaled back to two two-story dorms for about 200 students, which could cost Marymount as much as $30 million.

There’s not much near the college other than street after street of multimillion-dollar homes -- not a supermarket, not a convenience store, not a restaurant. If you weren’t looking for it, there’s a good chance you would drive past the college without noticing it.

Karp, 69, said students living on campus would bring unwanted noise to the area and add traffic to the narrow, winding road that is the only route to the school. The same would be true of a gym, she said, calling it “an attractive nuisance.”

“Nobody wants young students living in this neighborhood and turning the college into a 24/7 operation,” said Karp, who is semi-retired from the industrial real estate and property management company she and her husband own. “Once you bring dorms onto the campus, it’s a whole different ball game. They stay up to 3 in the morning.”

Brophy said the city’s traffic consultant found that if residence halls were built, there would be less traffic because fewer students would travel between campus and San Pedro.

As for the claims that Marymount might turn into party central, Brophy said he agreed that life there would be different. But older adults would be in the dorms to supervise.

“We have had a very positive experience in San Pedro,” he said. “We know it can be done and done well.”

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jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com