It's not unusual for a new school to be opposed by those whose homes, businesses, jobs or favorite market would be bulldozed in the process.
What's unusual is for them to stop an ongoing school project in its tracks, and that's what happened Tuesday, when a sharply divided Los Angeles school board put a badly needed 1,278-seat Wilmington campus on hold.
The project is already two years and $4.3 million along -- and had once enjoyed unanimous board support at the Los Angeles Unified School District. But it fell before the buzz saw of a campaign promise by Richard Vladovic, who joined the board in July, representing the Watts-to-harbor area district. While campaigning in Wilmington, he'd pledged to take on the planned location for the kindergarten-through-eighth grade school.
"The vision of this community has not been heard to the extent it should have," Vladovic told his board colleagues.
The project would erase a handful of homes along with a supermarket, a bank, a restaurant and several other businesses. They're part of a plain but useful shopping strip fronted by a treeless asphalt lot at the corner of North Avalon Boulevard and East M Street. Project opponents, along with Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, mobilized by the dozens to request a renewed search for alternate sites.
"The community around this center is the type we try to build in Los Angeles," Hahn said in an interview, "a sustainable community where people can walk to the bank and grocery stores and restaurants." Such conveniences are particularly welcome in an underserved minority community where many residents lack cars.
The school would take three overcrowded elementary schools off a year-round schedule and return them to a traditional September-through-June calendar.
"The children and families to be served by this aren't asking for the project to be canceled," said Mike Lansing, Vladovic's predecessor. Lansing chaired the board's facilities committee during most of his eight years in office and said his staff devoted hundreds of hours to selecting the best location for the campus.
"You need community leaders and elected officials to represent the voiceless majority," Lansing said, "especially in a community like Wilmington, with its highly immigrant and transient population."
The largest displaced business would be the refurbished Northgate Market, where a table is set up to gather signatures behind a sign that implores: "Save Our Shopping Center!" The effort snared more than 3,000 in one weekend, said Northgate spokesman Michael Stockstill.
