New West Charter School’s year-long effort to convert the former Santa Ynez Inn into a second campus came to a halt on Monday night when chairman David Eagle was informed by the Self-Realization Fellowship, which owns the property, that they are proceeding with another school to develop the 1.5-acre site. ‘We waited as long as we could before deciding that we would proceed with this other school,’ church spokesman Hank Shaeffer told the Palisadian-Post. While Shaeffer, a real estate attorney, would not name the school involved, he did confirm that it is a private elementary school and that ‘we did not go to them. They came to us.’ Eagle told the Post on Tuesday that New West’s agreement with the landlord began to unravel early in the new year when the charter school could not formally extend its Letter of Intent to lease because it had not been able to raise the estimated $750,000 needed to renovate the dilapidated property at 17310 Sunset. After Eagle informed SRF of the school’s financial predicament, the landlord ‘agreed to continue to work with us, even though we both knew there was a possibility they would lease to someone else,’ Eagle said. ‘The sad thing is, in the last month we were able to come up with more than the funds needed, but they said it was too late.’ While New West has received dozens of small donations in the past year from individuals, adding up to some $20,000, it wasn’t until three weeks ago that the school received its first serious financial commitment’from the William C. Bannerman Foundation, a small, family-owned trust. A week after that, Renaissance Academy, the new charter high school which is moving out of the 881 Alma Real business building at the end of June (see story below), agreed to commit $650,000 to improve the coveted Santa Ynez site, in a joint venture with New West. ‘Now we have $1 million and no site, ‘Eagle said. It was exactly a year ago that Eagle announced the school’s coup in securing a potential 10-year lease on the property, contingent on being able to come up with the improvement funds needed to bring the 14,000 sq. ft. structure up to code. The former Santa Ynez Inn was built in 1946 as a motel with 24 guest rooms. It had a swimming pool, a dining room (‘Fireside Grill’), and one of the two liquor licenses in town. Its simple ranch-style design is reflected in the dated beamed ceilings, brick floors and motel rooms which all open out to a central courtyard. After 30 years in operation, the inn was sold in 1976 to the World Plan Executive Council, better known as TM (Transcendental Meditation), which used the facility for meetings and retreats. In 1989 it was sold to its current owners, SRF, which owns a total of 15 acres on Sunset, including the nearby Lake Shrine. With the inn vacant for over a decade, the church has received many offers to develop the site, mainly for commercial use, ‘but we always told people we weren’t interested,’ Shaeffer told the Post in an interview last year. ‘While we have occasionally used the building for gathering purposes, we knew it was underutilized and in need of repair.’ Shaeffer said that while Self-Realization was not interested in selling the property, nor actively looking for a tenant, ‘when the opportunity came to lease to New West we felt their use was compatible with ours,’ which included SRF using the classrooms for Sunday school. New West’s plans for the new campus called for a full-size basketball court, a dozen classrooms, a science laboratory, and parking for 60 cars. Today, a wobbly chain-link fence surrounds the property. Eagle, a Highlands resident, said he underestimated how difficult it would be to raise funds for the Santa Ynez site. He proceeded based on his experience raising the $500,000 that was needed to renovate New West’s main campus on Pico, where a former furniture warehouse was converted into a modern, urban middle school in a record 3-1/2 months to meet its September 2003 opening deadline. New West’s Pico location currently has 280 students in grades 6 to 8. According to Eagle, about 20 percent are from the Palisades. The Sunset campus was expected to enroll 300 students and would either be an expansion of the middle school or a high school that could accommodate New West graduates. While Eagle was banking on private funds to pay for the Santa Ynez renovations, he was confident that the per-student allocation the public charter school would receive from the state would be sufficient to keep the proposed Sunset campus going after the startup. While Eagle would not discuss the details of New West’s proposed joint venture with Renaissance, RA’s executive director Paul McGlothlin told the Post on Tuesday that even with the loss of the Santa Ynez site, ‘we still have several possibilities for next year. We will be meeting with parents and students next Wednesday to discuss exactly what our options are at this point.’ Eagle, who has been working with a group of parents on developing New West for almost six years now, is ‘saddened’ by the turn of events and hopes the landlord, SRF, ‘will come back to us should the other offer fall through. Yes, I am hoping for a miracle here.’ (Editor’s note: Anyone who would like to contribute to New West’s ongoing fundraising campaign or who would like a refund for donations they made to the proposed Sunset campus can contact David Eagle at NewWestCharter@aol.com, or at 454-4348.)
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
