Officials Identify 5 Possible Downtown School Sites

Los Angeles school officials have identified enough available land in the downtown area to establish five new campuses for 7,000 students--including those at the aging and overcrowded Belmont High School, they said Thursday.

The sites would accommodate “smaller, better-equipped” high schools that could be completed within four years and paid for with construction bond money, said Howard Miller, the chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“All these sites are relatively environmentally clean,” Miller said. “Additional bonuses: Because of where they are located, they could relieve some other high schools and reduce the size of existing Belmont High to 3,200, permitting it to return to a traditional schedule.”

Within two weeks, district officials expect to have identified several more potential school sites elsewhere in the district that could provide seats for 8,000 other students.

Miller said he plans to present the list of sites to the Board of Education on March 28.

One of the five sites identified by Miller was the 12-acre former Ambassador Hotel in the mid-Wilshire district, where a school could provide 1,500 seats, Miller said. The district is expected to gain possession of the property through foreclosure.

Miller revealed Thursday that it might take 18 months and about $1 million to render the Ambassador land environmentally safe by removing fuel storage tanks buried on the property.

Another site is the 10.26-acre district headquarters at 450 N. Grand Ave., which Miller said could be converted to a high school with 1,500 seats. It would not be available until the district found a new facility for its administrative and business staffs.

The third site is the 12- to 15.5-acre Midway Ford, across the street from Virgil Middle School on Vermont Avenue, which Miller said could provide 2,000 seats for Belmont High students and 500 seats for Marshall High students. He said the district is in negotiations with the owners of the land.

Fourth is a 12- to 15.5-acre site at 1550 W. Washington, which could relieve overcrowding at Belmont, Manual Arts and Jefferson high schools. The site is a privately owned media business now in negotiations with the district.

The fifth site, at the 9.3-acre Evans Community Adult School, could provide 1,000 seats, Miller said. The district, which owns the school, has located commercial space along the Wilshire Corridor to house displaced adult students.

“The sites we’re looking at with 12 acres or more will be full-fledged high schools with full athletic facilities including track and football fields,” Miller said. “But the smaller headquarters and adult school sites will use athletic facilities at different home school locations.”

None of the sites is completely free of environmental risks, Miller said, “but overall, the risks in these cases are relatively small and can be cleaned up in less than a year.”

The district has been under intense pressure to identify new school sites in the downtown area since the school board voted Jan. 25 to abandon the $200-million Belmont Learning Complex, which was plagued with costly environmental problems. Those who fought hardest to save the 5,000-student facility feared there was little reason to believe that the district could come through on a decade-old promise to offer their neighborhood a modern, fully equipped high school.

At the time the project was killed, district officials had identified potential alternative sites, but some had worse environmental problems than the Belmont complex. Supt. Ramon Cortines directed his staff to find more alternatives, leading to the list of five that Miller plans to present to the board.

Plan for Smaller, Better Schools

“Like Samuel Johnson said, ‘Nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of being hanged,’ ” Miller said. “Now, I would say the Belmont issue is on its way to being solved.”

Board member David Tokofsky, agreed.

“A new intensity and focus took hold once we decided to shut down the Belmont complex,” he said. “We should have had alternative sites before we killed it. But once we did, we all told Howard Miller to work at breakneck speed. And he did.”

On Thursday, Cortines sent a letter to residents of the neighborhoods served by the 4,600-student Belmont High, informing them of the district’s optimistic plans.

“Our search has uncovered a variety of options that will make it possible for us to locate high schools closer to where the students live,” he said. “These schools will be smaller, better and built faster than what we might have expected.”

Board member Caprice Young attributed the district’s progress in locating potential school sites to a solid management team and “the fact that we’ve got an army of people literally walking block by block to see where we can put new campuses.”

But she said she will “withhold revelry until I see the full plan.”

“You can never be optimistic about any potential downtown construction site--all of them have problems,” she said. “But we’re off to a good start.”