North School will open in January of 2021 under a tentative construction schedule presented earlier this month.
The schedule was announced during a joint meeting of the Hermosa Beach City School District and Hermosa’s City Council. The two bodies sought collaboration in a number of areas, including anti-tobacco initiatives, and also firmed up some of the plans surrounding the reconstruction of the North campus.
The meeting followed weeks of tense discussions between the two bodies the board’s approval of an Environmental Impact Report for North in January. The city continued to raise concerns over the traffic impacts associated with reopening the school, but the two bodies managed to avoid litigation with a Memorandum of Understanding inked late last month.
The coming months will offer them a chance to reset their relationship and address lingering questions from the environmental review process. But they are also filled with deadlines, starting with next month’s school board meeting, when board members will approve a firm to handle construction at North.
Under a timetable offered by school board president Doug Gardner, once the construction firm is selected, there will be two to three months of “pre-construction work,” including identifying truck routes, with actual construction set to begin over the summer. Based on an estimated construction duration of 18 months, North would be ready to open after the district’s winter break in January of 2021. Once open, North and Hermosa Valley School would share the district population to allow construction at Hermosa View School, with all three campuses forecast to be ready by fall 2022.
Over the coming year, the city and school board will also be working to produce a neighborhood traffic management plan, including jointly selecting a traffic engineer. Because traffic was the most hotly contested issue in the time leading up to North’s approval, the district will hold two community meetings as it works on the traffic plan, including one in the coming fall before the engineer releases a draft. The traffic plan is expected to be completed by the end of the year, and then sent out for public comment.
“I’m sure there will be no shortage of reaction and comment to what they propose based on how this has gone so far,” Gardner said.
Part of the friction that emerged between the city and the district in recent months stemmed from frustration among some in the district about how delays in the process were adding costs and cutting into funds from Measure S, the school facilities bond voters approved in 2016 to finance the work at North, View and Valley. Much of the money that has been spent so far has gone to SVA and Bernard’s, architects and a construction management firm, respectfully, and to EIR consultants Placeworks. But according to Measure S expenditure reports, the district has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to law firm Atkinson, Andelson, Loyra, Rudd & Romo. The district also paid out additional money to Placeworks after it voted, at the city’s request, to recirculate the traffic section of the North EIR last year.
This information has been seized on by some of the district’s critics as evidence of bumbling management of bond funds; it has also been cited by board members as evidence of the financial threat posed by excessive delays. At last week’s meeting, board member Monique Ehsan announced that, with the agreement with the city finalized, the district had applied to the state for a share of funds from a state school construction bond approved in fall 2016. During the campaign for Measure S, backers had said that it would be among the first in line for the state funds. Ehsan said, because of delays caused by the EIR recirculation and a lawsuit filed in 2017, it was no longer clear that there would be any funds available for Hermosa schools.
City staff said they would focus on harmonizing their efforts with the district’s, and would take advantage of planning work that had already been completed.
“One of the primary things that we’ve heard through this process is that we need to maximize the efficient use of city and school district funds,” said City Environmental Analyst Leeanne Singleton.
