Application to modify the school’s permit was accepted by City Council
On Wednesday, Aug 14, the city council of Culver City recommended that Park Century School, located at 3939 Landmark St., Culver City be allowed to modify their Conditional Use Permit with the city in order to allow construction of a subterranean parking area with a two-story classroom building, as well as a playing field. This is being sought out by the school as part of a three-phase plan to expand and optimize the school.
In particular, the school believes that adding an outdoor recreation area is crucial for the students, as the exposure to the outdoors is shown to mitigate symptoms in children with attentional problems such as ADHD. Over 50% of students at Park Century has ADHD or a similar condition that makes this outdoor stimulation all the more crucial to their development.
Additionally, Culver City Parks and Recreation won’t allow Park Century to consistently use their facilities for flag football and soccer practices, so this field would facilitate these sports for the school.
Park Century also wants to expand its enrollment size, and this initial phase is meant to expand the school’s enrollment capacity from 120 to 170 students, with a long-term goal of 250 students. The subterranean parking structure would increase the number of dedicated parking spaces the school has from 43 to 69.
The school has done its due diligence before this meeting, conducting both a noise study that recommended some modifications to the construction of certain structures to minimize local noise disturbance, as well as a traffic study to analyze the impact of the increased enrollment.
Eventually, though, the school will need to expand its surface area to handle all of the bodies while abiding by city and state fire codes, but the school already has a plan in place for that down the road.
Phase 2 of the Park Century expansion plan involves assimilating the building at 3947 Landmark St. into the school. The property is currently owned by a group of the school’s trustees, with the plan being to sell the property to the school once it is ready to initiate the second phase. During the construction of the subterranean parking lot, this will be used as an offsite parking lot for the school, subject to city approval.
This leads to one of the more contentious parts of the proposal, and one that Park Century is eager to quell any worries about. In particular, there is concern about the loss of income from property taxes when changing the use of a building from industrial to a private school building as Park Century is intending to do here. However, the school emphasized in their master plan that the building would not be repurposed into an educational building until such a time as it was needed, remaining taxed as it currently is until that time. They also noted that such a time may not come, and the building would be used as a lease warehouse space indefinitely.
Construction is estimated to take 10-12 months, and cost the school approximately $5 million.
