What May Happen IF Marymount Wins New Accreditation

I know of an intelligent fellow who is in a position to know who has helped me understand what might happen with the Marymount College Facilities Expansion Plan moves forward IF the College wins accreditation to become a 4 year institution.

I was wondering where the Plan might head or not head if Marymount wins.

I have tried my best to offer his written comments to me below and I will add some opinion of my own. Don't I always?

I asked my source if he thought the Plan would have to back to the Planning Commission because of an accreditation change.

Here are his thoughts.

"Marymount will never return to the PC on this application. As I understand what the city council did, they have directed the environmental consultants to study the impacts of the new 4 year degree program. The results of that further study will be brought back to the city council no earlier than April with a decision then to be made by the city council (bypassing the PC completely). As a result, Marymount is a big election issue. It will be interesting to see what the candidates say."

I also wondered whether the gentleman thought the City Council members would seek a new application and/or call for new studies. I considered that if the student enrollment cap remained the same, then the current studies would probably be sufficient. Here are his thoughts on that.

"I don't think that the city council will order any additional studies beyond the current study. I expect that in April the environmental consultant will conclude that the change to a 4 year program will not impact any of the traffic impacts, parking impacts, mitigation measures, or other conclusions in the EIR. At that point, the city council (as then composed) will simply vote on the original application that the PC approved. I don't have any inside knowledge, but that is my prediction."

The individual who responded so kindly to my questions is someone who has been very involved with all the issues related to the Facilities Expansion Project.

It do feel and strongly believe that all the candidates seeking the two seats on our City Council should offer their opinions on both the application for accreditation change and their opinions on the entire Facilities Expansion Project.

The studies issue may come into more importance IF Marymount receives accreditation to become a 4 year institution because it means a higher percentage of students will probably own or use cars as transportation.

The older version of the Plan stated that if dorms were built on the campus, Freshmen living in the on-campus housing would not be allowed to have cars on campus.

If on-campus housing is ever built at a 4 year Marymount and Juniors and Seniors opted to live on-campus, I think they are two groups not originally considered as far as parking and trip generation in the current EIR.

It is not logical to support Marymount becoming a 4 year College and still strongly oppose on-campus housing. 4 year Colleges in California have some on-campus housing, I feel.

If you oppose on-campus housing then reasonably, you should also oppose the College's application to become a 4 year school.