Along a bustling stretch of downtown’s North Grand Avenue that is home to the likes of the Walt Disney Concert Hall and Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, a public high school is set to join the ranks of the area’s highly-regarded arts venues.

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s flagship $208 million visual and performing arts high school is expected to be completed later this year, and its bold, futuristic design is already turning heads along Grand Avenue.

Jutting, angular buildings of glass and concrete and steel populate the campus, while a large spiraling steel structure and a peculiar, conical library highlight the daring design decisions.

“It’s a very, very complex construction,” said Rick Hijazi, the senior project manager on the development. “It’s a completely different design than regular high schools we build.”

But it has been a struggle of more than half a decade for the school district and its supporters to bring the costly and sometimes controversial project to life.

Planners did not always envision an arts school at that site. In fact, the school district generated controversy in 2002 when it scrapped its plans to build a traditional high school in favor of an arts campus. Critics questioned the influence of billionaire philanthropist and noted arts supporter Eli Broad.

Broad has backed the effort to revive the Grand Avenue area with a massive redevelopment project and was a vocal proponent of the arts high school, donating several million dollars to help pay for the school’s construction costs.

Roy Romer, then the district superintendent and an ally of Broad, was a strong supporter of the project.

“We felt that we needed an arts high school in the center of the city and we felt that we needed a leading arts institution,” said Romer, now chairman of Strong American Schools, a nonprofit organization supported financially by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.

Rising costs

The bloated price tag was another point of contention that divided the Los Angeles Board of Education in 2006 and threatened to derail the project.

Construction was initially slated to cost $87 million a figure that soon jumped to $117 million. Then it ballooned to $172 million, heightening concerns. And with more than $30 million already spent or committed to related expenses, the school topped the $200 million mark.

Romer said at the time that with rising construction costs, developing a new proposal would likely have wiped out any additional savings for the school district. So despite misgivings, the board approved the project in June 2006 by a 5-1 vote.

Since then, the district has been supportive of the project and construction has remained on schedule, said Gary Gidcumb, associate principal with Ontario-based HMC Architects, which designed the school along with an Austrian firm. The school is slated to open in October.

And as it takes shape, the school is winning support from many who see it up close.

“It’s a pretty nice project. It makes you wish you were back in school,” said Daynard Tullis, a consultant with Los Angeles-based TBI & Associates Inc., which is overseeing construction.

The school district plans to divide the school into four “small learning communities” that will allow students to specialize in a specific area of the arts: music, dance, visual art or performance. To that end, the school will feature specialized classrooms, some with advanced acoustics for musicians and others with mirrors and raised floors for dancers, for example.

One challenge has been the logistics of constructing six complex structures on such a small site. At just 10.3 acres, the site is only about a quarter of the size of a typical high school campus, but it will have over 1,700 students. Beyond the sheer size, each building is highly specialized, with features such as irregular windows, perforated metal accents and a system of day lighting to keep energy costs down.

What’s more, the campus will have a 950-seat theater that will be open to the public, which planners like to point out is bigger than several venues in the area.

“It is very tied to the arts community down there,” Gidcumb said. “Architecturally it is, I think, very much in keeping with the Grand Avenue master scheme.”