Panel Urges Sale of Building for School

Breaking a deadlock over providing a new high school in the northeast San Fernando Valley, a City Council panel recommended Wednesday that the city go ahead with the sale of a Sun Valley office building to the Los Angeles Unified School District.

After holding the issue up for weeks over cost concerns, Councilwoman Ruth Galanter agreed to recommend the $50-million sale of the Department of Water and Power’s Anthony Office Building, but still questioned whether the deal was good for the city.

In particular, Galanter wondered why the city was selling a building when it was simultaneously entering into leases for private office space for other city departments.

Converting the partly occupied four-story office building into a school will force the eventual relocation of about 900 DWP workers, many of them to the agency’s downtown headquarters, displacing other city departments that will have to find new space, she said.

“It troubles me that we are saying we don’t need this building on the same day we are spending money to lease space in a private building,” said Galanter, who heads the council’s Commerce, Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

City Administrative Officer Bill Fujioka also questioned the deal, reporting “an apparent financial advantage for the DWP to retain the facility.”

But Ron Deaton, the council’s top policy advisor, recommended the deal, despite his concerns about its cost to the city in the long term.

Although the DWP may not profit on the transaction, Deaton said, the numbers are close enough that it is basically revenue-neutral.

The city spent about $75 million building and improving the structure at 8501 Arleta Ave. over the years, although two appraisals have set the market value at $50 million, officials said. Some improvements, such as fiber-optic lines, will stay with the DWP.

The city will pay about $3 million annually to the school district to lease back parts of the building for continued operation of a water testing lab and other functions.

The council acted after Supt. Roy Romer pleaded that the building is critical to relieve severe school crowding.

“This building, in short, gives us immediate relief,” Romer told the panel. “It gives us the opportunity to grow into a building that eventually will handle 2,500 students.”

Mayor James K. Hahn also urged approval of the sale, after school officials complained that it was being held up by city officials to force the district to drop a lawsuit alleging that the DWP was overcharging it for electric service.

“It is important that the city and the school district work cooperatively to find ways to resolve the underlying dispute in that lawsuit, but it must not affect the important issues related to the sale . . . for the purposes of establishing a much-needed school site,” Hahn wrote the council.

Faced with growing pressure to end the deadlock, Galanter relented, joining Councilwoman Janice Hahn in sending the sale to the council for final approval.

“I am not going to be the person who stands in the way,” Galanter said.

Councilwoman Hahn said cost concerns have to be balanced against the public good that would be accomplished by converting the office building into a school.

Romer said that if the full council approves the sale Friday, the district will move quickly to convert much of the building in time for it to open as a school next July.