Belmont Numbers Don't Add Up : L.A. Unified Doesn't Include Host of Factors

By AMY PYLE

May 25, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES EDUCATION WRITER

Entering the world of the Belmont Learning Center, the new high school proposed for the edge of downtown, is like a lesson in new, new, new math.

Facts and figures swim endlessly before your eyes, always slightly different than the time before, never quite adding up.

Like the $87-million cost the Los Angeles Unified School District keeps citing, which doesn’t include $61 million in land costs or a host of other factors that could push the total cost to $171 million or more.

Or the fact that, despite district denials, Belmont would be by most measures the most expensive public high school ever constructed in California, costing at least 2 1/2 times the national average per square foot.

Or last week’s offhand suggestion by district supporters that building the school would get 10,000 children off school buses--when the absolute maximum is one-third that amount.

As outrage has built over the cost of the school, district officials have seemed to compensate by raising their estimates of the number of children the school would help. It is the kind of semantic shifting that infuriates critics of the mammoth school system, who say they can never get a straight answer to their questions.

The experience of Steven Soboroff, the new chairman of the school bond oversight committee, is typical. Soboroff, who now counts himself among the Belmont Learning Center’s top supporters, alternates between bouts of cheerleading and complaining that so many district estimates about Belmont don’t add up. Taking a calculator to years of numbers in public and private paperwork about the project reveals myriad miscalculations.

State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), briefed by a reporter on the true cost of Belmont, said the numbers increased his resolve to ensure that state hearings are held “before one dime” of state education money is released to help build the school.

District officials are asking the state to commit more than $40 million in state matching funds and want to use another $40 million from Proposition BB, the $2.4-billion school construction and repair measure passed by voters in April.

Even the most politically persuasive reason for building the Temple Street and Beaudry Avenue campus regardless of price--that the expenditure would allow thousands of downtown area youngsters to attend school closer to their homes--turns out to be partly double-counting.

True, the Belmont Learning Center would have 3,600 seats and could enroll up to 5,300 students if classes were held year-round. But it would largely house the 4,400 children now attending the existing Belmont High School. If additional millions were spent, the older high school could be converted into a middle school.

So when tricks of time and complication are swept aside, the Belmont Learning Center creates a maximum of 900 new high school slots and the opportunity to add 2,300 middle school slots.

If in the end what is created is mostly middle school space, then why not build a new middle school instead at a fraction of the cost?

Ironically, that is exactly what was planned for the Belmont Learning Center site--abandoned plans that cost the district $730,000 before the high school idea was raised after next-door land was secured and dreams of a new high school in the Mid-Wilshire district dissolved.

L.A. Unified Deputy Supt. Ruben Zacarias, who becomes superintendent July 1, said he welcomes examination of the project’s cost, but fell back on the district’s standard defense: “Whether it’s 90 or 900, each child is entitled to a school in their community.”

For years, L.A. Unified’s standard response to criticism of Belmont has been that the critics are all wrong, manipulated by unions opposing the district’s chosen developer, Kajima International. The Japanese company is locked in a prolonged labor dispute at its New Otani Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

But facts are facts, except in the world of Belmont, where some school district projections have changed gradually, from document to document, meeting to meeting. The $87-million estimate grew in fits and starts from a $60-million estimate tossed around three years ago. Other numbers have changed quickly, based on uncorrected misunderstandings.

Witness last week’s exchange at a public meeting between bond oversight committee Chairman Soboroff and the district’s development director, Dominic Shambra:

Soboroff: What happens to the old Belmont High School?

Shambra: That is converted to a middle school.

Soboroff: And is there a need for a middle school? So how many students will be serviced here?

Shambra: About 10,000 students.

Soboroff: Wow!

Soboroff later acknowledged that he knew that building Belmont would not benefit 10,000 students. But that clearly was the implication he was trying to draw from Shambra. By the end of the oversight committee meeting, the number had become part of Belmont’s mythology.

“We’re talking about the lives of 10,000 kids here!” Soboroff told a reporter.

To reach a claim that high is quite a stretch of logic and requires including far more than the learning center. It means counting the not-yet-funded middle school, packed to the gills all year long. It also includes other potential uses for the current Belmont High School, such as an expanded newcomer center--generally a gathering place for new immigrant students bused in from all over the city--and room for the 670 students uprooted from the Downtown Business Magnet to make way for the new high school.

At maximum capacity, the new high school would eclipse the current Belmont High as the largest district high school. The future middle school would rank in the top 10 among 71 district middle schools. It runs counter to national and L.A. Unified trends of building smaller, more intimate campuses.

In its 1997 report on school construction, the Council of Educational Facility Planners pegged the median high school building cost at $101 a square foot, less than half the lowest cost estimate for Belmont: $264. The average size was also less than half: 150,000 square feet compared to Belmont’s 326,000.

One of the reasons the project is so expensive is its design. To avoid building another impersonal monolith, the district adopted an “academy design,” in which a series of four buildings connected by catwalks each would house a course of study--travel or government, for instance.

Added to that, the site was topographically challenging, its steep slope better suited to its previous terraced streets and houses than to a giant high school with playing fields. To overcome that handicap, an estimated $13 million of the price tag would go toward simply creating a flat site by grading and then building a concrete podium, atop which the school would sit.

Underneath the podium would lie a $7-million parking garage and, if negotiations with retailers proved fruitful, some stores. If not, the district would have to spend another $7 million on site work that would otherwise be paid by the commercial developer.

Several other unusual additions to the high school plan never materialized--and would increase the district’s cost.

Take Shambra’s idea to combine a school with shops, which he estimated could provide the district up to $1.3 million in annual revenue. Two years later, there are no solid commitments for even a more modest retail plan and no talk of revenue flow.

District officials blame investor skittishness on the political atmosphere and delays whipped up by the Hotel & Restaurant Employees Union, which has been joined by the teachers union in its fight against Kajima International.

But others--including a competing developer rejected by the district for its pessimism--believe that the retail plan was deeply flawed, neglecting the fact that most retailers do not favor poor neighborhoods or areas near high schools.

As evidence, the district has given up on the dream of integrating a full-scale, mainstream store into Belmont--Ralphs, Vons and Lucky all were mentioned--and settled for a vision of a smaller, discount chain outlet.

The district has gone to lengths to prove that even without retail revenue, the school’s price is reasonable. The cornerstone of its argument is a single chart comparing it to two other new high schools: Lynwood and Pomona. Using that standard, an $87-million Belmont Learning Center would be in the ballpark--more expensive by both per-pupil and per-square-foot measures than Lynwood, but less than Pomona.

However, Pomona High School is a third the size of Belmont--thus not comparable to Belmont’s presumed economy of scale--and Lynwood is the most expensive high school construction project funded by the state in the past 10 years, according to the State Allocation Board.

“What kind of math is that?” asked David Tokofsky, one of three Los Angeles school board members who have consistently voted against the Belmont project.

Soboroff defends Belmont, saying it has so many unique requirements that comparing it to Lynwood is like comparing “apples to grapefruits.”

The Belmont project leaps even further above Lynwood High when you add the $13.5 million the school district expects City Hall to contribute for community recreational enhancements: a bigger gymnasium, a second swimming pool and lighting for the field.

Unlike most public construction projects, the Belmont Learning Center was never competitively bid. The district worked it through a loophole Shambra and other administrators believed they had found in state laws requiring bidding.

After advertising for developers, a district-appointed panel reviewed the tentative plans of three finalists and chose a group headed by Kajima based on creativity, not price. Kajima’s price estimate, in fact, was the highest of the three.

Critics question whether negotiating leverage was lost. Subsequent state law allowing such exclusive arrangements has never been implemented and is now being challenged both by State Allocations Board attorneys and legislation carried by state Sen. Leroy Greene (D-Carmichael), the allocation board’s chairman.

One of the frequent explanations for the high price is that the Belmont Learning Center development agreement, signed by the school board late last month, includes a “guaranteed maximum price,” or a lid the construction bills and developer fees are not supposed to lift. Negotiations to reach such an agreement take more time and energy upfront and result in higher developer fees, school officials say, but could save money over the long run.

Development fees of various types represent $5.7 million of the $87-million portion of the bill and fees for inspections, and so-called “soft costs”--which include furnishings for the new school--represent another $12.4 million.

Unable in recent months to brag about the developer financing or retail revenue aspects of the deal, the district has taken an unusually humble step: pointing to its poor track record with contractors in order to defend spending a little more this time for insurance against surprises.

At last week’s bond oversight committee meeting, administrators reported that some school construction projects had ended up 80% over budget, drawing gasps from builders and architects in the room.

The lengthy negotiations required in such complex deals bulked up consultant fees because experts were needed for some aspects.

Working closely with Shambra from early in the deal was Wayne Wedin, a former Brea City Council member who was acquitted of conflict-of-interest charges there after he admitted he had been paid as a consultant by a development firm seeking a city contract. Wedin has been paid $667,000 in the past six years, according to district billing records obtained by The Times.

Another highly paid consultant is David Cartwright, an attorney with the prominent law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, who has served as the district’s chief negotiator with Kajima. His work on the project dated back to 1988, when he helped look for land. District billing records separate his work on the project from other legal work he did for L.A. Unified only for the past three years, when he earned $525,000 on Belmont.

Cartwright has been singled out by critics because his firm also represents Kajima in other matters. That conflict was not disclosed publicly until the September 1995 meeting at which school board members were to vote on entering exclusive negotiations with Kajima. That meeting came months after Cartwright and another attorney from his firm had served on the five-person developer selection team.

Even the higher $171-million estimate that can be reached by adding the many costs fails to calculate several possible bills not covered by the “guaranteed maximum” development price of $87 million.

For example, the estimate does not include the likely full cost of acquiring several more houses still standing on the 35-acre plot, where property owners may be holding out for more money. Nor does it include inevitable future legal and consultant fees. Nor the cost for addressing any environmental problems beyond the $2 million already included, a worry for some because the land includes active and former oil wells and once was the site of a gas station.

Those concerns led the vice chairman of the school bond oversight committee, Deputy City Controller Timothy Lynch, to fire off a memo last week opposing the project.

Even if the price escalation could be controlled, he said, “I see this project as being more costly than it should be.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Penciling Out the Costs

The $87-million cost often quoted for the proposed Belmont Learning Center is far too low. And the 10,000 estimate of how many students would benefit is also overstated. Here are the figures:

The Costs

Purchase of 11-acre parcel of land (4/93): $31 million

Purchase of 24-acre parcel of land (2/94): $30 million

Architectural plans for Belmont Middle School (abandoned 3/94): $730,000

Consultants’ fees, 1991-97, including accountants, negotiators, lobbyists: $886,900

Chief negotiator David Cartwright, O’Melveny & Myers attorney, 5/94-4/97.*: $524,612.

Current construction / development fee estimate: $87 million

Joint powers agreement with city for recreation: $13.5 million

Additional construction costs if no retail to offset: $7 million

Purchase of additional land: $500,000

Cost of delays because of legal challenges or additional review: unknown

Cost of environmental work on site above the $2- million allowance: unknown