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Preservationists try to convince the L.A. school district that a legendary
hotel would make a great high school.
By Jade Chang
The Metropolis Observed
March 2002
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The Ambassador Hotel, empty since 1989, was the site of Robert Kennedy's
assassination.
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Photos/Postcard: Collection of Anne Lasky
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The success and failure of historic preservation efforts in Los Angeles
can be seen on a single stretch of Wilshire Boulevard. Bullock's Wilshire
department store became the Southwestern University law library without
losing an ounce of Art Deco character, but a few blocks west the hat-shaped
Brown Derby restaurant is now a beige minimall, topped awkwardly with its
famous dome. Across the street is the city's chance for redemption: the
beloved yet beleaguered Ambassador Hotel. Shuttered since 1989, it is the
centerpiece of a decade-long struggle between the Los Angeles Unified
School District (LAUSD) and local investors.
"Here is where Bobby Kennedy stood when he won the '68 primary,"
says Ken Bernstein of the L.A. Conservancy, pointing to a blueprint of the
Ambassador ballroom's northwest corner. We are looking at the conservancy's
proposal to convert the hotel into a 2,295-student high school. It may be
the Ambassador's best, and last, hope for survival. Last December the LAUSD
bought the 23.7-acre property--which currently holds the empty hotel and
11 original bungalows--for about $105 million. The district's plan is to
tear down the historic buildings and erect some combination of high school,
middle school, and/or K-12 learning center. More space is sorely needed:
Cahuenga Elementary School alone buses 1,300 students to distant campuses,
and the downtown neighborhood lacks space for things like literacy programs.
But should the hotel where RFK was assassinated after accepting the 1968
Democratic Party presidential nomination be razed to build them?
The Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, and Dallas's Texas School Book Depository--sites
that round out that 1960s trinity of tragedy--have both been converted to
memorials. And some historic preservationists cringe at the thought of a
high school at the Ambassador, preferring to see it either turned into a
memorial or renovated as a hotel. Now that the LAUSD owns the site there
is little chance of either happening. However, the conservancy's proposal,
put together with the pro bono efforts of local architects Barry Milofsky,
Arthur Golding, and Martha Welborn, would save the Medi-terranean-style
exterior as well as the grand lobby (as entrance hall), marbled ballroom
(as library), and the legendary Cocoanut Grove nightclub (as auditorium).
There are no plans for the kitchen, where the assassination occurred, but
it could become an RFK memorial. The reuse proposal would be cheaper--at
$55 per square foot for rehabilitation of the shell--than building a new
exterior from the ground up for $80 per square foot. And according to Bernstein,
the elements that made a stand-out hotel translate easily to a school. "The
lobby is a great gathering place for students," he says. "It lends
itself to wonderful social interactions."
Gary Russell, president of the Wilshire Center Chamber of Commerce, worries
that student "social interactions" will drive away businesses.
"The way that place goes is the way this community will go," says
Russell, who would like to see street-front retail space in addition to
a school. "I'm concerned with how it integrates itself into the urban
fabric."
"Our overall goal is to make sure that all of our school sites become
the centers of their communities," counters school board president
Caprice Young. She has examined the conservancy proposal but, like all LAUSD
officials, is wary after the $160 million Belmont Learning Center fiasco,
in which a new school meant to be "the pride of the city" was
unknowingly built on a toxic dump (and has remained unfinished since
1998). Young will say only that the reuse proposal is "very thoughtfully
considered." The LAUSD is going through the motions of community meetings,
but in the end the decision rests wholly with a gun-shy school district
not known for its imagination.
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