A Letter from Van de Kamps Coalition
Hello Friends & Neighbors,
Dr. Moore, the President of Los Angeles City College will be at the Atwater Village Neighborhood Council this Thursday May 14, 2009 @ 7:00 pm @ Christ's Church, 3852 Edenhurst Ave. to make a presentation on the future of the Van de Kamps / North East Campus. Due to the many inquires about the site and the recent article in the LA Times, we felt it necessary to address some of the issues briefly and give you some background information.
In 1999, the Van de Kamps Coalition formally known as the Coalition to Save the Van de Kamps Bakery spearheaded the campaign to make sure that this site became a viable asset for the North East Communities instead of another controversial BIG BOX Development. Through their and then Senator Richard Polancos’ efforts, they were able to stop this development and lead the campaign to save the building from demolition. Having completed the main goal of the coalition, now the task before them was to find a use than benefited the community for that site and after countless meetings with various organizations, they secured an agreement from LACC to construct a satellite campus.
Funding became their next issue, with the help of Senator Richard Polanco who secured $3 million dollars in seed money from the state budget and the passage of Proposition A/AA bonds, LACC and LACCD had the funds to start construction of the campus. With total of $61 million dollars budget allocated in 2004 for this campus and a targeted date of opening in Fall of 2005, the plans for this site quickly fell into internal political strife bringing on delay after delay and burning through millions of construction dollars.
The VDK Coalition has been on the LACC Steering Committee striving to make sure that LACC completes its promise to the community made back in 2004 to construct and open their satellite campus. However, recently, Steering Committee meetings have been suspended. The Coalition has not been notified of any Steering Committee Meetings for over a year and has called on the District to resume those meetings.
Countless delays, personnel and administrative changes, endless meetings, consultants and $20 million wasted in endless revisions of the original plans, cost overruns wasted in endless revisions (one building lost) the project finally emerged from the arduous process. While “green” technology is being used in the final project, the original plans included even more use of “green” technology due largely to a prescient concept put forth by the Coalition and Dr. Dan Seymour, who originally headed the project for LACC. He also produced an innovate plan for funding the satellite campus that has since, apparently, been dropped by the district. Though diminished in building funds, less “green”, lacking its sustainable funding plan and smaller in scope, the project was back on track in 2006.
As late as 2008, we were lead to believe that this campus would open in the fall of 2009, a full adult community college campus with programs such as a Child Developmental Center, Work Force Center, availability to the community for some space for community functions and Fitness Center that would complement the academic portion of the college.
In January, the VDK Coalition learned that LACC, without forewarning, had turned over this site to the Los Angeles Community College Board to "manage" for the next five years due to budget shortfalls. Upon hearing this, the Coalition immediately contacted Dr Moore and advocated that LACC and LACCD hold community meetings throughout the Northeast Communities.
LACC and the LACCD would reveal no further information to the community or the Coalition until plans for the site would be outlined in the community meeting at LACC held on April 27th. Upon hearing the plans that the LACCD has for this site, the VDK Coalition went into immediate action.
LACC and LACC District has now said that it is budget issues that prevent this campus from opening - conveniently believable at this time of state budget crisis. But in-fact the State of California has money available to start up new campuses in the form of Center Status grants. LACCD paid a consultant hundreds of thousands of dollars to prepare and complete such a grant for the Van de Kamp's location, then withdrew the application. Why? We may never really know. Regardless of the reasons, there is nothing standing in the way of the application being submitted and a community college opening other than the will of the Community College District.
The Coalition has asked for a complete accounting of all the funds and their uses since the inception of this process. Despite being assured by the district personnel that this was an easy thing to do and would take little time, the Coalition has not heard back about this.
We are asking that you attend these meetings and voice your concerns. Los Angeles voters voted for Prop A/AA Bonds (a total of 3 Billion Dollars) to build Community Colleges and not to create buildings for the District to unilaterally decide to lease out to Charter Schools and place LACCD Administrative Offices. In this time of economic crisis, how can LACC and LACCD afford to waste taxpayer’s money? Please let your voices be heard.
The VDK Coalition is as committed today as they were when they first helped bring LACC into this process and secured the promise of a Satellite campus, to see that this college opens. We are in the midst of organizing thousands of emails, documents, and pictures for our new website, along with conducting our own investigation. We will be sending out an announcement soon when our website is up and running. If you would like to be added to our list for future developments, "action alerts", or would like to email your comments/questions regarding this “new change of management”, please send us an email at vdkcoalition@gmail.com.
Thank you,
Van de Kamps Coalition
