Schools Win Round in Land Battle

The Los Angeles Unified School District has won the latest round in a battle over an eight-acre canyon property it owns in Brentwood.

A Superior Court judge in Los Angeles ruled this week that the district does not have to sell the property to a parks consortium that last year bid $2 million for it. The decision allows the financially troubled district to offer the Sullivan Canyon land to other possible buyers for what its officials say could be as much as $17 million.

The money from the sale could go toward constructing badly needed schools elsewhere, said Patrick Perry, an attorney for the district.

“They need to maximize their resources to the greatest extent possible,” he said. “The sale of the existing surplus property is one of those resources.”

L.A. Unified purchased the land for $280,000 in 1961 as the site for a proposed elementary school. The district no longer wants the Brentwood land, now used for horse riding, because the public school student population in that neighborhood is not growing much and many families there send children to private schools.

Since the 1980s, the district has leased the property to the Sullivan Canyon Riders Club, a group of equestrians, some of whom live in the nearby affluent canyon area.

But early last year, the district began efforts to sell the property. After learning in November that its lease would not be renewed, the 140-member riding club joined in an effort to buy the land with the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, a consortium of state and local parks agencies.

Saying the area’s zoning for recreational space depressed its price, that authority offered $2 million, mainly raised by the horse riders, and was the sole bidder. The school district contended that a rezoning or residences would make it worth as much as $17 million. The district later began the process of evicting the horse riders.

The recreation authority sued in September, arguing that the land should be sold only to another public entity and that the price should be based on it staying parkland. The authority wants the stables and other riding facilities to remain.

“Public land is supposed to be used for a public purpose,” said Stanley Lamport, an attorney for the consortium.

Judge Dzintra Janavs ruled Wednesday that the price of the land could be based on the prospect of rezoning and subdividing it for housing. She suggested that the price would probably fall between $2 million and $17 million.

Lamport said the consortium will appeal.

The attorney for the district said the parks authority should either give up the effort or increase its bid.

“We would have sold it to their group,” Patrick said, “but we wouldn’t have sold it for $2 million.”