An overflow crowd at the Altadena Community Center heard the town council’s land use committee unanimously reject the application for a school on Palm Street after an emotional meeting Tuesday night.
At one point a sheriff lieutenant was called in to escort out a man who had left his seat and was advancing on the committee, calling them “fascist”: “None of you live on Palm -- you creeps!” he said as he was led out.
Pictured: the Palm Street school site.
The hearing was for a conditional use permit (CUP) for the Arroyo Pacific Academy, which operates a private school in Arcadia. Academy president Philip Clarke hopes to open another campus at the site at 183-205 E. Palm St., which has been a hotbed of neighborhood concern since another school opened there without permits in 2008. Estimates of the crowd attending Tuesday night’s meeting were between 150-185.
Academy: problems can be solved
Clarke told the committee that the Palm Street campus would start with 120 students, and planned for a maximum of 250 students ages 14 through 18. He cited the example of the Arcadia campus, which he said had no problems in twelve years of operations. Clarke also brought in consultants who analyzed the Palm Street site for neighbors’ concerns, which he said were “traffic, noise, and property values.”
Clarke and his consultants told the committee that they would be able to mitigate most of the concerns of the neighborhood, with small buses to bring in students and no bells to mark change of periods nor outdoor physical education activities. They also said that projected noise levels did not exceed county standards, and that all evidence points to neighborhoods’ property values going up in the presence of a quality private school.
Clarke’s positive picture was countered by members of the Palm Street Area Residents Association (PSARA), many of whom were wearing red and holding copies of the red “No School on Palm” signs that are ubiquitous in the neighborhood. That organization was formed after the property’s previous owner, Sahag Mesrob Armenian Christian School, opened a 200 student school the day after Labor Day, 2008, without notifying the neighborhood nor securing the proper permits. The court ordered the school closed at the end of the school year in 2009.
Opposition remains strong
Committee chairman Mark Goldschmidt at one point asked for those who opposed the school to stand up (approximately one third of the crowd). Those who were in favor of the school also stood up, representing about two-thirds of those attending.
Coleen Sterrit of the PSARA challenged the numbers, saying that the people from the “No School on Palm” side were the people who actually lived in the neighborhood, distinct from those who supported it and did not live in the neighborhood. Sterrit said that the neighborhood -- with narrow, sidewalk-free streets and a semi-rural character -- was not suitable for a school. Other speakers pointed out that the property is in a bowl-shaped area, which amplifies sound, and the previous experience with a school on the property just strengthened their resolve that it was not an appropriate use.
Per an agreement with Goldschmidt, only four members of PSARA spoke against the school. This was followed by a series of pro-school testimony which included everyone from out-of-town Arroyo Pacific Academy parents to Palm Street area residents. The PSARA members in the crowd soon were wondering why they were limited to four speakers while those supporting the school seemed to be endless. PSARA’s Al Grindon said that he felt they were “hoodwinked” by the committee.
Committee cites neighborhood opposition
In the end, the committee members were not swayed to approve the permit. The issue was not the quality of education the academy would provide, said town councilman Ken Roberts, but the use of the property.
Committee member Brian League said that a conditional use permit is connected to the land, not the owner of the land. If they approved a zoning change to make it a school, it would then always be a school, no matter who owned it. “I want to look at the property in fifty years,” League said.
Town councilman Brent Musson said that “if the entire neighborhood were on board, it’d be a no-brainer,” but the property was zoned residential, and there’d need to be an overwhelming need to change it.
Councilman Okorie Ezieme, who represents the area, said that one of the provisions of a CUP was that it needed a buy-in from those who are affected. Ezieme said that, in his own survey of the neighborhood, there was “overwhelming opposition” to a CUP.
The committee voted unanimously to recommend to the town council that it deny Arroyo Pacific’s CUP application. The matter will next come up at the town council meeting Sept. 20.
