The school board canceled the half-finished project in 2000 over concerns that oil field hazards had not been sufficiently analyzed before construction. By that time, the project had been sullied by conflicts of interest among district staff, consultants and the chosen development team -- resulting, eventually, in the creation of an internal watchdog, the inspector general's office.
Then-Mayor Richard Riordan used the Belmont scandal as a clarion cry to force out school board incumbents and elect a majority of allies, who quickly pushed out district Supt. Ruben Zacarias. (Riordan later acknowledged that he had no objection to completing the school.)
At the same time, the new and remaining board members, along with Supt. Roy Romer, launched campaigns to pass three bond issues, beginning an intensive $20.5-billion building and modernization program that became the nation's largest. Along the way, Romer outmaneuvered his own doubting school board to revive Belmont in 2002, after he became convinced that the project was needed, safe and cost effective.
Romer's Belmont ambitions were temporarily sidelined when geologists discovered an earthquake fault on the property.
The revised blueprint required demolishing any buildings that stood directly over the fault as part of a somewhat smaller campus and a nature park developed with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and other agencies. To sidestep the stigma of the past, officials named the 35-acre park and school Vista Hermosa, or "beautiful view."
The project's most consistent and effective opponents included David Koff, a researcher for Local 11 of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees International Union. His digging figured into legislative and law enforcement investigations, although no charges were ever filed. Local 11 originally had entered the fray to put pressure on the Kajima Corp., which opposed unionization efforts at its downtown hotel. Kajima also headed the first Belmont private development team.
"As a project, Belmont was far ahead of the capacity of the district and the quality of the people who were involved in the undertaking," said Koff, who now works as a filmmaker. "Since that time a lot of projects of a similar scale were undertaken and completed." On balance, however, "I doubt that the legacy of Belmont could be measured in a positive way that offsets the cost of its history."
