Belmont School, Ambassador Site Teach Hard Lessons

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Few school projects have had as long, tortuous and costly a history as the Belmont Learning Center and the Ambassador Hotel site, the two largest and most expensive projects in the district’s massive expansion program.

Despite grave overcrowding in surrounding neighborhoods, each project has dragged on more than 15 years and each will cost the district and by extension taxpayers more than $375 million when complete.

“These are two of the most overcrowded areas in the entire region and it’s a downright shame that the kids have missed out on quality classrooms for so many years,” said Guy Mehula, facilities chief for the district.

These projects also took a political toll. Mismanagement surrounding the Belmont venture cost several school board members their seats and led to a perception that district administrators were incompetent. And the protracted legal battles over the Ambassador site strained relations with some civic leaders and historic preservationists.

Now, though, the Belmont site, since renamed Vista Hermosa Learning Center, is set to open in September, while the last legal barrier to the Ambassador project just fell weeks ago and three schools there are slated to open in 2009 and 2010.

The Belmont project was mismanaged from the start in 1988 with an original plan for a massive high school and a retail complex. However, nothing on this scale had ever been attempted by the district and costs began to skyrocket, passing $150 million and making it the nation’s costliest school project.

Crucially, district administrators failed to account for the building atop a well-known abandoned oil field, where methane and hydrogen sulfide gas posed a threat of seepage or explosion. In 1998, the state stepped in, halted construction and began an investigation.

The resulting scandal fed into perceptions that district administrators were incompetent, a sentiment tapped by then-Mayor Richard Riordan when he recruited a slate of candidates who were elected to the school board. The slate halted work on the project, leaving a half-built, $172 million campus.

Three years later then-Superintendent Roy Romer sought to resume work with a new layout: small clusters of schools surrounded by open space and a scaled-back retail component. But within weeks of board approval, an active earthquake fault was discovered passing through the site, forcing relocation of some of the buildings. Construction finally resumed in 2003, but soaring materials costs caused the budget to double to $200 million. Late last year, the district dropped the retail component altogether in favor of a training center. The project is on schedule for its September opening with the cluster of schools housing 2,800 students.

From the Belmont fiasco the district learned two key lessons: building smaller schools and the importance of hiring building industry managers to lead school construction.

The Ambassador project faced a more common construction nemesis: lawsuits. In 1988, the hotel closed after falling on hard times, and a year later real estate mogul Donald Trump bought the 23-acre site for $63 million. Trump proposed a 125-story tower, which would have been the tallest building in the U.S.

But the school district decided it wanted a school there to relieve overcrowding, and in 1990 put a $48 million bid on the site. It asserted eminent domain and won a 10-year court battle.

However, a plan to tear down the hotel and build three schools ruffled preservationists who filed suit to prevent the demolition of the historic hotel. In 2005, a settlement was reached: In exchange for permission to tear down most of the hotel, the district set up a $5 million fund for the preservation of other historic school buildings. It also pledged to incorporate as many features of the hotel as possible into the schools.

An elementary school broke ground last May and is set for completion in September 2009. Work began last month on the $320 million second phase, a middle school and high school that are expected to be finished in 2010.

“Persistence was the key lesson,” said Mehula, of the Ambassador experience.


Howard Fine

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Howard Fine
Howard Fine is a 23-year veteran of the Los Angeles Business Journal. He covers stories pertaining to healthcare, biomedicine, energy, engineering, construction, and infrastructure. He has won several awards, including Best Body of Work for a single reporter from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers and Distinguished Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists.

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