Never heard of Central Los Angeles High School #11? How about Vista Hermosa High School? No? That's deliberate. You see the Belmont Learning Center, aka the world's most expensive high school is far too controversial. Belmont is what happens when planners get to make the decisions. CLAHS #11 is just a way of relabeling a bad idea.
So. What did the planners decide when given a chance? Mixed, use, high density, urban core, transit oriented, and exempt from all the usual environmental concerns that planners would insist be addressed had this not been a planning showcase.
"But Rob. What's wrong with a badly needed urban high school?" Nothing. That isn't the question. How would you suggest $400 million be spent to greatest effect?
22 comments:
first murst and purst?
moist!
Oh yeah, since I went ahead and got the damn blogger account....
Rob, on your Caiso energy conservation day thread I wanted to post how the CPUC and LAWP are intentionally shutting down coal fired electrical generation Cal utilities own and doing anything possible to thwart new coal generation in OTHER states.
Mohave Generating Station and Delta Power Project Unit 3 are examples of this.
Good luck getting power in the future or being able to pay the electricity bill.
$400 million, OUCH!
The only good thing is some hard-working Contractors probably got a sweet paycheck.
Ahhh, Belmont...Isn't this the school built on the grounds of the Ambassador? The one where it kept being delayed due to Toxic waste or something?
HUGEST.CLUSTERFUCK.EVER.
Problem with LAUSD is that Villaraigosa is NOT a good Mayor and should not be handed the reigns. Bloomberg did the job in NYC because he understands how to effectively run large organizations. Villaraigosa is an egomaniac who would only muck up the district even more than it is.
Whoops...Delta Power should be Intermountain Power.
My mistake.
$400 Mil for a high school? AHh ha hahah ha ha hahh hah hhahah...for how many students?
Links... topical for all to see 8-P
Don't forget your hazmat suits.
state
full disclosure where I think Rob got his image..!
Interesting that Rob remembered this thing... note
I was lucky enough to have visited the old Ambassador Hotel a couple of years ago before they tore it down. It was on a film shoot, as the place had been used for filming (commercials and movies) for some years prior to its demolition. Wandering around the back rooms, kitchen where RFK got whacked, the hallways and so forth was like being in a time machine or on the set of "The Shining." I actually walked all the way up to the 10th floor (the elevators were no longer in service) and looked in to various rooms in really awful states of disrepair -- no doors, holes thru the walls, inches of nasty gunk in every sink and toilet. Really sad to see a landmark like this get knocked down.
Wow. At least LA is getting an expensive school that is used for actual education. We get a stadium. See, our school board has its priorities straight.
Mixed, use, high density, urban core, transit oriented, and exempt from all the usual environmental concerns that planners would insist be addressed had this not been a planning showcase.
Hi-density MUDs make a HUGE amount of good sense in a place like L.A. Especially when built on a major transit corridor. There are a lot of such developments sprouting up here, many built directly over the Metro stations. And it's actually refreshing to see a project go up in the Peoples Republic of California that isn't bogged down for decades due to overblown environmental concerns. Buildings have been built before, this isn't rocket science.
If there was one project I really would have liked to see completely stopped do to the environmental issue, it was Playa Vista, which took away most of the only remaining wetlands in the city. The Belmont project, otoh, is in the middle of the most built-up part of the city already.
Is that story STILL going ! I remember it over 10 years ago I think - how the heck can they solve a hazardous material issue - oil oozing from the ground I recall - in a place where kids will hang about ?
Sigh.. part of the charm of LA was that it was, as the famous book put it - "Capital of the Third World". I didn't have to go jetting around to get a sense of planetary reality. But THIS, with the associated ethnic ( not yet sectarian, thank god ) politics, the corruption, the real estate kingpins hand in glove with local govt. - this is the downside of all that.
-K
OT: (&cross posted at Ben's HB2)
Flipping Houses.... That is *so* 2005. How About Flipping Corporations?
Comparing the 2002-2005 real estate bubble to PE M&A LBOs repackaged as IPOs
Who are the home builders? Black Stone, KKR.
Who are the sub-prime lenders: TIAA CREF, Pension funds? Mutual Funds?
Who are the prime lenders?
Who are the REITS "trusts". This is where it breaks down.
Buy a public company with leveraged money (LBO). Fix it up (optional) and flip it with an IPO. Is this really what's happening?
Perhaps. But instead of CDO (collateralized debt obligations) we have CLO's: Collateralized Loan obligations. There is a lot of cheap money sloshing around right now. The Black Stone (BX) group was a private equity firm. They bought companies and took them private. No SARBOX, no need for GAAP. Private corporations. Why did they go public then? If I have learned anything from the Housing bubble: eventually there is no greater fool.
"Celanese US Holdings, a chemical business bought by Blackstone, borrowed money within a year of the acquisition to pay a dividend to the private-equity firm, Moody's added, removing more than 95% of the cash equity originally invested in the deal."
Does that smell like "Cash back at closing" to anyone else?
Here are the steps I took in playing the housing bubble SHORT:
KBH: Home Builders (+40%)
NFI: Subprime lenders (+100% could have been a 10 bagger if I was more patient)
CFC: Prime Lender (Remains to bee seen. Look at their "prime" foreclosure rate
AHM: REIT (+100%)
PE M&A LBO SHORTS:
BX? GS?
Am I way off base here? Can there be as straight forward of an analysis? The PE M&A LBO banking industry is non-trivial and opaque. We need to blog Opaque to diaphanous...anyone?
Hal F. Wit
props to ITULIP
http://www.doic.net/defaultflip.htm
It must give you great pleasure to point fingers, like Nelson, and say "Ha Ha!" On the other hand, school kids continue to be packed into substandard classrooms all year long. But you feel like a big man -- Haha! Look at them darkies! Do you feel any sense of ownership? Of course not, you don't even live in Los Angeles.
Rob:
"How would you suggest $400 million be spent to greatest effect?"
How about NOT collecting the $400 million in the first place, and letting the taxpayers decide directly how best to spend their own money?
Okay...that'll NEVER happen.
So how about taking a page of Clintonism and pay down the existing debt?
Lost Cause,
I'm not ready to draw conclusions from your ambigious comments. Is there something you want to say? That's okay. We are all adults here. Those of us who don't choose to be anonymous at least.
Where do you see pleasure in my criticism?
What makes you think the LAUSD facilities are generally substandard?
Where is there any trace of personal engrandizment in my comments?
Any mention of the demographics around Belmont?
Are you familiar with CA elementary and secondary funding?
And since you deem it a qualifying prerequsite for me tell us where you live. Coward.
At 6:53 PM, Pleather Murse said...
Hi-density MUDs make a HUGE amount of good sense in a place like L.A. Especially when built on a major transit corridor. There are a lot of such developments sprouting up here, many built directly over the Metro stations.
Of course, of course. But Pleather, didn't you read the articles? Do the research? The school district has removed every aspect of mixed use and TOD from the plan.
LostCause;
"On the other hand, school kids continue to be packed into substandard classrooms all year long."
Aren't they YOUR kids?
if they are packed into substandard classrooms all year long,whose fault is that?
Who tolerates it?
You got bums in the LAUSD? Toss 'em out.
"Haha! Look at them darkies!"
Is this another tiresome rant from the "Angry Black Male Club"?
You can't, or won't, provide for your own kids' educational environments and this is someone else's fault, huh?
But Pleather, didn't you read the articles? Do the research? The school district has removed every aspect of mixed use and TOD from the plan.
I'll have to look into that. Maybe tomorrow after I've had my crabgrass shot and a little power nap, I'll be ready for some massively focused research action. Going to look at my options, maybe do some Googling. It's all good!
$400M. Damn.
Will they have pony rides?
Interesting--LA is in the process of building schools while DC is in the process of closing them down. $400M is, unfortunately, not a huge sum for the DC school district, which blows through almost $1B a year. Fenty is conducting a full audit of the school district; this is going to be very interesting. Looks like we're going to find out who's been receiving all of that welfare-money-in-disguise.
But when it comes to LA, come on, don't blame Villaraigosa--I mean, he's been rather . . . distracted . . . of late.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20000605/anderson
I know that article is from 2000. Still an intersting read. Earthquake faults, methane pockets, carcinogens. LAUSD is growing by 15,000 students per year?
I don't know what I'd do with $400,000,000. But I know what I wouldn't do. And what I wouldn't do is put a high school on top of toxic waste.
What a colossal waste of money and energy.
That Nation article is amazing. And the school still isn't supposed to open until 2008.
Mindblowing.
I was going to bet that the school would end up being torn down before any students even attended but...
From wikipedia:
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 along with interviews of the major players involved with the planning, development and investigations of this project.
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