Conservancy, community lobby school district over Ambassador plans
By Brian Lewis of the Los Angeles Independent, 11/7/01

Although Los Angeles Unified School District officials haven't decided yet how to use the Ambassador Hotel property, community members and Los Angeles Conservancy officials are already making their feelings known.

Both the Wilshire Center community and the Los Angeles Conservancy have begun lobbying Los Angeles Unified School District officials about their plans for the Ambassador Hotel property.

The district bought the prized Wilshire Boulevard property late last month, the climax of its 12?year?old quest to secure the site for use as a school. Now with the district's focus turning to what kind of school to build there, the community and Conservancy are making sure their concerns are heard.

Conservancy officials will meet this week with LAUSD representatives to discuss reusing the main building of the historic hotel where celebrities played for decades and Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968.

"We hope that we can work with the school district toward a win?win solution that provides a much?needed school for the community while preserving and revitalizing one of our city's most important landmarks," says Ken Bernstein, director of preservation issues for the Conservancy. "And we think that's within reach."

According to Bernstein, the conservancy last year commissioned a study examining the transformation of the 82?year?old hotel building designed by architect Myron Hunt into a school. The study, he says, showed that not only was it feasible but also cheaper than building a new structure.

"We think we can get to a place where the LAUSD can get a better school faster that is structurally sound and less expensive than if they demolish the Ambassador and start with a clean slate," Bernstein says. "Much of the savings comes from the fact you are starting with an intact structural system, you're not having to start from scratch."

The conservancy's study calls for converting the upper floor hotel rooms into classrooms, transforming the Cocoanut Grove nightclub into the school auditorium, turning the hotel's grand ballroom into a library, using the Ambassador's underground retail area for community meeting space and building a new gymnasium and athletic fields south of the hotel building.

The result, Bernstein says, makes for a "very good and efficient campus."

Los Angeles Board of Education President Caprice Young, who represents the area around the Ambassador, says the district will listen to the Conservancy's presentation and give it strong consideration.

Her focus now, however, is what to build at the 3400 Wilshire Blvd. site.

Although the district has solely talked about the Ambassador as a high school campus in the past, Young says she is now looking at maximum usage of the property by building a middle school and elementary school in addition to a high school.

"The most important thing is that we have a world?class educational institution," Young says.

District officials note that the Wilshire Center community is home to some of the city's most overcrowded schools, where year?round calendars, portable classrooms and busing are the norm for many students.

"There's so much need in that area," Young says. "They need a middle school, a high school and an elementary school.... Beggars can't necessarily be choosers."

The possibility that the school district might build three schools on the Ambassador property alarms Gary Russell, president of the Wilshire Center Chamber of Commerce.

To avoid having the school "in everybody's face," Russell is calling on the district to develop a "retail buffer" along the Wilshire Boulevard frontage of the property.

"[The Ambassador] is the nucleus in the center of the community. The way that project goes is the way the community goes," he says. "These are our kids, we're concerned about their education. We understand there is a need...but we're also concerned about their parents having jobs."

Russell contends that the district's first attempt to acquire the Ambassador property in the early 1990s directly led to a hollowing out of the Wilshire Center community.

"We have a history of fear of a school," he says. "We've seen the exiting of businesses when that became a discussion point.... We've come back from the abyss. People were writing our obituary, but we said no, this part of the city is not going to become a blighted area."

Bernstein says the conservancy is open to the buffer concept provided that what is built does not block out the historic hotel building.

"I think there's an argument to be made for that," he says.

Whatever is built there, both Russell and Bernstein hope that the district works with them.

"We want dialogue not for the sake of dialogue. We want meaningful interaction," Russell says. "The school district is part of our community. We just don't want them to be overly heavy?handed."

"I hope they enter the discussions with an attitude toward finding a way to create a win?win solution," Bernstein adds.

With a community meeting to discuss the Ambassador property tentatively set for Saturday, Jan. 26, at Virgil Middle School, only time will tell.