Belmont Learning Center
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Belmont Learning Center is an extension to the existing Belmont High School on West 2nd Street in Los Angeles. It is being built on the southern end of the same lot of Belmont High School.
[edit] Controversy
Belmont Learning Center was expected to split the enrollment of Belmont High School in half, accommodating around 2,100 students (compared to the approximate 5,500 students at Belmont High). From the very beginning of the plans for the school in 1988, it was known to be contaminated with hazardous gases from the oil field that used to be in the area. LAUSD started construction anyway, and it was not until 1999 that the seriousness of the gases was realised. Construction was partially halted for most of 1999. The project as a whole was abandoned in 2000, when the LAUSD voted that it was not a correct area for a school.
Later that year in December, Superintendent Roy Romer proposed finishing the project using a private developer. In 2002, "An Alliance for a Better Community" was selected to finish the project. The project would cost $98.3 million to finish.
In September 2002, when the LAUSD felt confident about the project being finished, a groundbreaking (literally) discovery was made: an earthquake fault was detected on the northeast portion, further complicating construction efforts. The project was again temporarily suspended.
In May 2003, the LAUSD voted to finish the school, but with certain modifications: a 10 to 12 acre (40,000 to 49,000 m²) park, a 500 seat learning academy, library, auditorium, and a parent center, making it one of the more luxurious schools of the urban sections of the LAUSD. The project became one of the most, if not the most, expensive school projects in the United States at $300 million. Part of the money to pay for the construction would come from the local Measure K bond of $3.3 billion, as well as city money.
In December 2004 approximately 60 percent of the new and never occupied buildings on the Belmont Learning Center Campus were demolished due to being located on top of an earthquake fault. The unpublicized demolition was captured on videotape by the Full Disclosure Network, an independent and educational television production and is available for viewing free "on demand" 24/7 as a public service on the Belmont page of the website [1] along with numerous and extensive interviews of the major players involved with the planning, development and investigations of this project.
In late January 2005, the Los Angeles Downtown News reported that certain discoveries and new ideas for construction brought the price down to about $10 million to build the school. The project has yet to be constructed.
