Archer School Project Poses Potential Traffic Issues

Anyone who lives in Pacific Palisades and has to travel on Sunset Boulevard to the 405 has likely gotten stuck in traffic at some point.

Kim Chase, who lives in Brentwood near Barrington, has the opposite commute, driving her son to and from school in the Palisades along the heavily congested thoroughfare.

“I go back and forth twice a day and sometimes three times a day. And it is bad,” Chase wrote on the Palisadian-Post’s Facebook page.

That commute could be getting even worse due to a proposed improvement project at Archer School for Girls on Sunset in Brentwood.

Dubbed “Archer Forward,” the school proposes to add approximately 76,000 square feet of “new net floor area,” including replacing its north wing, developing a 41,000-square-foot multipurpose facility, a 26,000-square-foot performing arts center, a visual arts center and an aquatics center.

The outdoor athletic fields would also see improvements, including regulation-size soccer and softball fields. An underground parking structure is proposed to go beneath the athletic fields for approximately 212 cars. Two adjacent properties would be absorbed into Archer School.

Christina McIntosh, director of communications and marketing at Archer, told the Post they “expect the final plan will be a consensus document that maintains the balance between meeting Archer’s core needs and addressing the concerns of our Brentwood neighbors.”

The 6th through 12th grade girls’ school opened in 1995 in a converted Pacific Palisades dance studio with just over 30 6th and 7th graders. The school moved to its 7-acre campus on Sunset in Brentwood in 1999 and has grown to 440 students.

“The Archer Forward Plan would add facilities and programming equal to what most schools, public and independent, already have – allowing girls access to facilities they need and deserve,” McIntosh said in an email. “Like their counterparts in co-ed schools, girls at Archer want to learn in modern classrooms, play competitive athletics on a home court and have access to quality arts facilities.”

Some neighbors don’t see it that way. Opponents to the campus expansion project have been distributing flyers in Pacific Palisades in recent months to alert Sunset drivers that traffic will get worse if the current project moves forward.

Brentwood resident Thelma Waxman, who has lived for nearly 19 years on a street adjacent to the campus, has created a website (www.archerneighbors.com) to voice opposition to the expansion.

Waxman told the Post Archer’s plans are way too big in scope and will negatively affect traffic along Sunset, especially at the Barrington Avenue intersection. Waxman said the current work on Pacific Coast Highway, coupled with the future lane widening on Wilshire Boulevard for bus lanes, would push more traffic to Sunset where commuters and residents have already endured years of gridlock caused by the 405 Freeway expansion.

“It will be gridlocked from the 405 to the ocean,” she said.

Waxman thinks the current school’s plan needs to be downsized.

“They moved in and want to change the way they’re doing business in the neighborhood, and we bear the burden,” Waxman said.

School representatives told the Post they are “still in productive discussions” with neighbors and local community groups and that based on those talks, a final environmental impact report will include modifications to a draft EIR completed in April.

Waxman’s website posts statements from various local groups voicing concern over Archer’s project, including the Brentwood Homeowners Association, Brentwood Community Council, Brentwood Hills Homeowners Association, Brentwood Glen Association, Bel Air Skycrest Property Owners Association, Pacific Palisades Residents Association and Pacific Palisades Community Council.

The PPCC sent a letter to the Department of City Planning on April 22 addressing its concerns for Archer School’s project adversely affecting traffic on Sunset, noting that current traffic conditions on Sunset and surrounding Brentwood streets “affect thousands of Palisadians on a daily basis.”