How did Greg Schem, managing partner of the 881 Alma Real building, go in three short months from telling the Palisadian-Post how ‘pleased’ he was about working out a lease with the new Renaissance Academy to saying he wished he had never heard of the school? Schem, who has been threatened with legal action by the high school, met with RA officials on Tuesday night, after which he told the Post that ‘the termination of the lease still stands.’ (See story above). ‘The bottom line is, there is too much of a gap between what the school wants to do and what we believe is feasible in the building. We disagree on the use of the space and the number of students. Now the goal is to work together to see this year through.’ Schem’s investment group, which includes Palisadian Bill Simon, purchased the 89,671-sq.-ft. building in October 2000 for approximately $14 million. Clearly, the over $400,000 in revenue his Village Real Estate, LLC partnership would garner from the initial one-year lease on 13,600-sq.-ft. with the school (with a five-year option to renew) would greatly reduce his vacancy rate, which was ‘much higher than any landlord would want it to be in a building of that size,’ said local commercial broker Gregg Pawlik. ‘You’d also want to be careful about that kind of mix [school and commercial] and how it might or might not be a good fit.’ Schem said that by bringing in the school he did not anticipate any problems with existing tenants, the largest being the real estate firm Prudential John Aaroe on the ground floor, or with the two dozen other tenants in the building who provide a range of medical, legal and financial services. However, ‘the tenants did complain,’ Schem said, particularly about the noise of about 250 students entering and leaving the building. Nor did he anticipate the uproar in the community over leasing the space to the school. Local residents vented their rage at two raucous Community Council meetings (August 26 and September 9), and have continued to express their displeasure in telephone calls and letters to LAUSD and city officials. The lease agreement with Renaissance Academy, signed in late June, provided that the new public school would occupy 6,000-sq.-ft. on the ground floor. It was understood that no classrooms were to be built on this level’only ‘counseling rooms’ and administrative offices for the school’s 23 employees (including 20 fulltime and part-time teachers). The classrooms would be on the lower terrace level, which seemed a perfect fit on the same floor as Fancy Feet Dance Studio and Gerry Blanck’s Martial Arts Studio. As envisioned, Renaissance would take over the 7,500-sq.-ft. space formerly occupied by Bouquet Multimedia, a post-production company. The advantage of this lower terrace site was that it had a built-in recording studio and its own entrance at the rear of the building as well. This would help segregate the students from the other tenants, which was important to Schem, who said he was assured by founding director and principal Paul McGlothlin that ‘no more’ than 50 students would occupy the building at any one time. ‘I think having a school in here is a great idea,’ Schem said when he was interviewed by the Post in July. ‘The fact is, in the last few years this area has gradually transformed itself into a school-friendly neighborhood,’ referring to Seven Arrows Elementary School around the corner on La Cruz, the Village School annex currently under construction at the corner of La Cruz and Alma Real, and Corpus Christi Elementary School on nearby Carey. ‘I am very excited about the building,’ McGlothlin confirmed to the Post at the time. ‘I always thought it had a campus feel to it. And being so close to the village, the library and the park, it is actually perfect for us. As a community school many of our classes will be held off-campus anyway, ranging from the Palisades library to Theatre Palisades to Santa Monica College.’ McGlothlin assured the Post that even though the school expected an initial enrollment of up to 300 students, most of them from the Palisades area, ‘not all of them will occupy the Alma Real building at the same time’ and that traffic problems in an already congested neighborhood would be minimized ‘as the students will either be bused in or will walk to the building.’ When asked how many students would occupy the Alma Real building at any one time, McGlothlin said he ‘could not say, exactly.’ In early August, as soon as building permits were issued by L.A.’s Department of Building and Safety, renovations to accommodate Renaissance Academy began. On the terrace level, existing sound editing suites were converted into eight meeting rooms, four of which were permitted for classroom use, and two new restrooms were built. While a quarter of the space on the ground level was turned into offices, the rest was divided into seven ‘counseling’ rooms, each of which could clearly accommodate up to 24 students at a time.
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