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AMBASSADOR HOTEL UPDATES

February 2004

The final vote on the Ambassador by the Board of Education, once slated for last fall, now appears likely during April of this year, with a possible first discussion before the Board's Facilities Committee in late March.

A coalition of community organizations, including the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), the Cesar Chavez Foundation, and the Central American Resource Network (CARECEN) has now come out in support of demolition. These groups argue that the Ambassador is not architecturally or historically significant and that the extra costs associated with the reuse option would detract from equal educational opportunity for neighborhood residents.

The Conservancy supports most of the coalition's goals: to get kids off buses and into a neighborhood school as quickly as possible, and to maximize joint community uses on the Ambassador property. We are pleased that the community is now becoming more involved in shaping the future of the Ambassador site. But we also believe that demolition of the Ambassador is a lose/lose proposition: for the kids and for all Angelenos.

The Conservancy has been seeking to engage this new coalition to find a "win-win" solution a solution that gives kids in this community the very best school possible while preserving one of Los Angeles' most significant historic sites. There is, in fact, no false choice here between education and preservation. The reuse option will provide the same 4,400 K-12 school seats to get kids off of buses and can be a great public school. After all, many of our nation's most outstanding schools -- from elite private universities to prestigious urban public schools -- are housed in historic buildings. Here in Los Angeles, the Bullock's Wilshire building just four blocks from the Ambassador now has state-of-the-art classrooms for Southwestern University law students, and the elite Archer School for Girls in Brentwood has created classrooms from the guest rooms in the former Eastern Star convalescent home.

Reuse of the Ambassador also has broad-based support, both from Angelenos of all ethnicities and backgrounds, and from within the Wilshire Center-Koreatown neighborhood itself. Nearly 2,000 members of the community have sent letters to the School District urging preservation of the Ambassador, including dozens if not hundreds of Latino residents. The Wilshire Center-Koreatown Neighborhood Council has endorsed reuse, as have six other nearby neighborhood councils.

As for the issue of cost, the Conservancy's detailed cost analysis of the project found that rehabilitation of the Ambassador would cost $46 million more than all-new construction -- about a 15% premium in the context of a three-school campus project with total costs that will be between $300 and $400 million. However, this differential does not arise because the historic rehabilitation is inherently more costly: indeed, the cost per square foot of rehabilitation is actually less than new construction. The differential is entirely explained by the differing sizes of the alternatives: the reuse alternative yields 627,000 sq. ft. of floor area, vs. 460,000 in the all-new construction alternative a 25% difference. It is therefore little wonder that the reuse alternative costs more. Yet LAUSD persists in giving no economic value to this extra space, which could be utilized by community organizations, LAUSD offices, or leased out for additional revenue. It is also important to note that at least five other LAUSD school construction projects have costs per square foot that significantly exceed even the District's own inflated estimates of rehabilitation costs for the Ambassador.

The Conservancy's team of technical consultants and real estate professionals has identified more than $45 million in potential cost savings to the project- all savings that may be achieved without affecting educational quality or the layout and use of the Ambassador building itself. For example, LAUSD is providing all parking on-site through an expensive subterranean garage, which requires substantial excavation and complicated construction. Replacing the subterranean parking with a small parking structure saves $15.0 million in construction costs. Replacing a football stadium along Wilshire with two soccer fields and a park saves $6.2 million, mostly in expensive grading and retaining wall costs. Putting a truck dock for the school at grade instead of underground saves another $3.1 million.

The Conservancy hopes that LAUSD will begin to explore these and many other cost savings more seriously to achieve the "win-win" solution for the Ambassador site: providing a great urban public school in an unparalleled historic setting, at a price tag that remains affordable for taxpayers.