School District Can’t Use Site, Can’t Let It Go

The financially strained Los Angeles school district is sitting on a $14-million parcel of land in the Santa Monica Mountains that was purchased long ago as a school site but now is leased out--at a loss--to a private horse-riding club, officials conceded Wednesday.

The district pays $55,000 a year in property taxes on the land, but receives only $16,000 in rent from the Sullivan Canyon Riders Assn.

The 7.6-acre site in Sullivan Canyon near Pacific Palisades was purchased in 1961 in anticipation of a westward expansion in enrollment that never materialized.

Since 1982, the district has been trying to sell the land, which is just north of Sunset Boulevard near a middle school.

But all such efforts have failed, in part because of opposition by the parcel’s wealthy and influential neighbors.

The district has prepared studies of the feasibility of opening the land for development as a subdivision or swapping it for other land that could be used for schools. The land is currently zoned for use as open space.

In 1992 an effort to sell the property was “unsuccessful because of actions by nearby residents and Sullivan Canyon Riders Inc. to intimidate prospective bidders,” according to a history of the site compiled by district officials. Efforts to sell or lease the land to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy have also failed.

School district officials admit to frustration in dealing with the land. “Should something be done? Maybe. But people have tried to move it in the past. What we have out there is homeostasis. It hasn’t moved,” said Joseph Zeronian, the district’s chief financial officer.

The Sullivan Canyon parcel is the most valuable of 10 pieces of land scattered across the city that the school district has labeled surplus properties with a combined assessed value of more than $27 million, Zeronian said.

Told of the situation Wednesday, Roy Romer, the district’s new superintendent, said: “I’ll not have it.”

“I want that property sold immediately, then I want to use that $14 million to buy land where kids need schools.”

But neighbors are certain to continue their opposition to any such move.

“I’m not sure horses are the real issue here,” said Mea Argentieri, the co-owner of a television production company who lives in the vicinity and is a member of the riders group. “It would really change the neighborhood immensely in terms of traffic and stoplights and things like that.

“This is one of the last sanctuaries for urban country living left in Los Angeles County,” she said. “It would be a tragedy to lose it.”

That explanation does not sit well with activists who would like to put a charter school on the Sullivan Canyon site. “Los Angeles Unified has the gall and audacity to say it can’t find enough space to build new schools. Yet it’s been letting rich people use land for nothing,” said David Eagle, a television director and one of the leaders of the New West Charter Middle School Development Group--about 150 Pacific Palisades and Brentwood families interested in building a new charter middle school.

“I call it welfare for the rich,” Eagle said.

Then there’s the big, nettlesome sign outside the horse facility that reads: “Sullivan Canyon Riders Club. Private Club.” A smaller sign that declares the parcel to be “Property of Los Angeles Unified School District” “was uprooted and then partially hidden behind a tree,” Eagle said.

The charter school group has met--so far unsuccessfully--with district officials, including Los Angeles Board of Education member Valerie Fields, to discuss having the land turned over for use as a school.

Fields said the issue “never even got up on my radar screen until the charter school group came to me a few months ago.”

Several of her campaign contributors live in the Sullivan Canyon area, Fields noted, adding that she had “talked to Paul Moyer about it,” referring to the KNBC-TV Channel 4 news anchor. “He was against a school being built there. He’s a celebrity. I didn’t ask him why he didn’t want it. I just listened.”

Moyer is on jury duty and unavailable for comment, according to KNBC.

A member of the riders club, who spoke on condition of anonymity, defended its use of the land. “We give riding lessons to 153 children from across Los Angeles County each year,” she said. “Every child who owns a pony in the area donates them to teach less fortunate kids how to ride,” she said.

Scot Graham of the district’s real estate division insisted that “we are positively going to get full market value for that land somehow, someway.

“As for when, I can’t say. We need a well-thought-out plan.”

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NEW SCHOOLS

Officials are about to break ground on two new schools, Supt. Roy Romer says. B1