The school site at 183-205 Palm St. is expected to change hands today.
If all goes as planned, the site of the former Bienvenidos Children’s Center on Palm St. will be sold today to the president and principal of a private Arcadia prep school.
But, says Arroyo Pacific Academy president Philip Clarke, he does not intend to repeat the mistakes made by the previous owner, the Sahag-Mesrob Armenian Christian School, which operated a 200-student day school at the site in 2008-2009 without proper county permits and without warning the neighborhood.
The county ordered Sahag-Mesrob closed at the end of the 2009 school year, the students moved to a location in Pasadena, and the property has been vacant ever since. Earlier this year, the Almansor Center expressed interest in buying the property, but ran into strong opposition from the neighbors, who have organized as the Palm St. Area Residents Association (PSARA). The residents are still smarting from the Sahag-Mesrob experience -- “No School on Palm” signs are evident all over the neighborhood, including across the street from the property itself.
But Clarke says he going to be sensitive to the concerns of the neighbors: “I want to make sure they’re fully informed ... I want to be sensitive, because I do have a lot of sympathy for what the Palm St. residents have put up with.”
Clarke said he is buying the property in his own name, rather than the Arroyo Pacific’s: “Clearly, my intention is for it to be for educational use, but I’m not planning to use it as a separate school.” The educational use, he said, will be “for students at [Arroyo Pacific]. I think we are best seen as another campus for our school to be used for specialized work,” such as the arts or environmental studies.
“The property there is unique in that it provides a serene atmosphere that is good for education -- but if you turn it into a noisy hellhole, that won’t help anybody.”
Clarke said he was going to immediately begin seeking a conditional use permit for the property, which will be needed if it is going to be any kind of school. Such a process can take more than a year to complete.
He also said “the first thing I’m going to do is clean up the property -- it’s been a blight on the neighborhood the way it’s ... deteriorated.”
However, residents of the neighborhood are viewing Clarke's plans with a grain of salt.
"I met (Clarke) three weeks ago at the property, and he told me his plan was that he intended to open a high school ... Honestly, I started laughing," said Coleen Sterrit of the PSARA. "It seemed so absurd to me. He said his high school was different. Well, we've heard that before."
Sterrit said that she was puzzled that the plan changed in just three weeks. "I think it's interesting that someone would spend millions of dollars on a piece of property and not know what to do with it."
PSARA still has one position: "We don't discriminate against schools: no school on Palm." Rather than a day school of any kind, she said, "We have always had a clear idea: we would like to see something residential there," such as an assisted living facility, hospice, or even a residential school and care facility, as it was when it was Bienvenidos. "We would like somebody to occupy the property because it’s no good to any one if the property is empty.
"But a day school of any kind, it’s not going to work. There’s too much traffic, even if they’re busing them in. The impact is just too great for our small little neighborhood."
