A decade after Marymount College began seeking permission to build dormitories and expand its aging campus, the private Rancho Palos Verdes institution has decided to circumvent elected officials and pitch its plans directly to city voters.

The college announced late Tuesday that it had submitted to the city its intent to gather signatures for a ballot initiative that would provide a public up-or-down vote on its modernization plans.

On-campus housing for 250 students - the element of the college's long-running plans that has most inflamed local passions - is part of the proposal.

"We need residential facilities to fulfill our mission," college President Michael Brophy said Wednesday.

Among the most controversial issues before city officials in recent years, Marymount's $50 million expansion has been stymied by a lengthy planning process and by neighborhood opposition.

Yet the Catholic college has contended it has broad backing for its plans, and that is in part why school officials say they are seeking a popular vote.

"We have always felt that we have the support of the community and taking it to the ballot is the surest way to prove that," Brophy said. "The college needs closure. We don't need this going on for another 10 years."

Marymount announced in 2000 that it wanted to build dormitories, a new library and athletic center and to make improvements to its existing buildings on its 25-acre campus on Palos




Verdes Drive East. The proposal has changed multiple times since then, causing delays and prompting the need for time-consuming and expensive new environmental analyses.

Last spring, after it became clear that the city Planning Commission did not support the addition of dorms to the campus, which is surrounded by residential neighborhoods, Marymount officials took the two buildings off the table. After tinkering from commissioners and college officials, the rest of the project was approved in the summer.

Shortly thereafter, a neighborhood group that had long been critical of the project - called Concerned Citizens Coalition/Marymount Expansion - appealed the decision to the City Council.

Appeal hearings were set to begin last September when Marymount announced plans to add three bachelor's degree programs to its traditional two-year degrees. That triggered an additional review, which recently found that the new academic offerings would only minimally change the effects the modernization would have on surrounding neighborhoods.

A full City Council hearing on the CCC/ME appeal remains set for March 30. It will mark the first time in a decade that the council has weighed the merits of Marymount's plans.

That fact prompted Mayor Steve Wolowicz on Wednesday to remark on the timing of Marymount's initiative efforts.

"This seems like it's appealing a decision before a decision has been made," Wolowicz said. "We are into unchartered waters."

College officials said the timing was unusual because they wanted a sufficient number of weeks to gather voter signatures in order to qualify for the Nov. 2 general election ballot. Initiatives for that ballot must be finalized by June 24.

Lois Karp, president of CCC/ME, said news of the initiative had officials and residents buzzing.

"I think they've just stirred up a hornet's nest. People aren't usually happy about that," she said.

Karp's group has continually called for Marymount to scale back its plans, reduce traffic impacts and provide more parking.

The dorms have long been the group's main target, and Karp said their return falls in line with her view of Marymount's handling of the planning process.

"This is typical. This has not been a stable project from the beginning. Marymount has constantly changed the project," Karp said, adding that she had been surprised by the initiative announcement.

"By doing an initiative, it defeats the purpose of the city government. And it usurps the jurisdiction of the City Council," she said.

Local ballot initiatives have been available to citizens in all California cities since 1911. In its 36-year history, Rancho Palos Verdes residents have weighed several ballot measures, but apparently only two have been proposed by outside groups - a view ordinance authored by a homeowners group and an effort to eliminate a storm drain user fee. Both failed.

The 54-page Marymount initiative measure - submitted by college trustee and city resident Sue Soldoff - is based on the project that was weighed last year by the Planning Commission, with the dorms added back.

"It's not something where we're springing a bunch of new stuff on the community," said Steve Kuykendall, a former local congressman who is acting as a spokesperson for Marymount's initiative campaign.

Marymount officials have in the past blamed the city's extraordinarily detailed planning process and project opponents for delays.

"We have been concerned that a very small, vocal group of community residents has a disproportionate impact," Kuykendall said. "It has taken so long and so much time for both the city and the school . It was almost like it just became the objective to go down this path."

The initiative would seek a General Plan amendment allowing for a "campus specific plan" that would let the college erect new buildings as money is raised for construction, rather than within a time frame determined by the city.

Marymount officials say the years of uncertainty have seriously hindered their fundraising efforts.

"It's a moving target. What am I asking donors to donate to? It's very frustrating," Kuykendall said.

Two dormitory buildings would be built on a south-facing, ocean-view slope that's very visible from the road. The existing enrollment cap of 793 students would remain in place.

The athletic facilities and library would be available to city residents, an element that contributed to making the campus a "community jewel," Kuykendall said.

Under state law, City Attorney Carol Lynch must draw up simplified ballot language within 15 days. A court challenge to the language could then be made.

Once the language is final, the college will have up to 180 days to gather signatures from registered voters - though it will have to do that much more quickly to make the June 24 deadline.

Marymount will need valid signatures from 10 percent of registered voters, or about 2,700.

Kuykendall said the college, which funded polling in 2006 and 2008 that showed overwhelming local support for its plan, would campaign with "very broad outreach" for the initiative.

Once the signatures are ruled valid, the council could approve the initiative without sending it on to voters, or could authorize the measure to take a spot on the ballot.

The whole question is a surprise, Wolowicz said.

"Nobody saw it coming," he said.

Though he was hesitant to comment on the initiative measure because he had not yet read it, Wolowicz said he expected the resurrection of the dorms to be the central concern for residents.

Voters outside of the residential areas that surround the college, he said, may be ambivalent about the modernization. But the dorms may be a more volatile issue with residents for philosophical reasons.

"What I find unique about this - and people should not read anything into this - is it's high-density housing. That's what a dorm is," Wolowicz said. "And the reason the community incorporated was to avoid high-density housing."

melissa.pamer@dailybreeze.com
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Now let's see,

According to the Environmental Impact Report for the Facilities Expansion Project. 40% of the additional daily trips to and from the campus will be along Western Avenue between Trudie Drive/Capitol and Palos Verdes Drive North.

The proposal to build on-campus housing at the college per the Project's plans were shelved by the college just before that portion would have been soundly turned down by the Rancho Palos Verdes Planning Commission AND very shortly after an underage student died as a result of his own driving drunk on Palos Verdes Drive East.

According to the city of Rancho Palos Verdes' Border Issues group, the Volunteers of America are continuing to work towards opening up their 76 housing units they acquired from the Federal Government, accessed by Palos Verdes Drive North, next to Rolling Hills Prep. and Marymount's off-campus Palos Verdes North student housing site.

Palos Verdes North has 86 residential units in which approximately 300 students and staff live during the school year.

Incidently, the college also owns an apartment building near the corner of Cabrillo Avenue and 24th Street where approximately 116 students and staff live. This complex was repeatedly said to be being closed by the college, several times, yet it is still open.

While Ponte Vista at San Pedro is no longer a site where 2,300 condominiums were envisioned, the number of units considered last year for the site was narrowed to 1,395. Still, whatever is eventually built new at Ponte Vista, all traffic to and from the finished development must travel along at least a portion of Western Avenue.

Marymount College is owned by a religious organization and is not subject to taxes like other businesses are in Rancho Palos Verdes. The city's residents have to pay for many of the mitigation issues if the college's project move forward.

It is no secret that Marymount College probably cannot survive much longer without being able to offer on-campus housing.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of $37,000.00 to $39,000.00 is the cost to attend the Palos Verdes Drive East college, and that is per year.

It is also fairly well known that the college's administration and supporters are seeking to gather students whos parents either live out of the State or out of the U.S.A.

Those parents seem to be demanding that their children be monitored and it appears that Dr. Brophy, the President of the college and his supporters believe that local residents, city government, and other authorities behave somewhat like student-sitters while students attend classes at the college.

Most two-year Junior or Community Colleges have a student population that attends the school only on a part time basis. In fact, that it for the majority of two-year campuses all over the country.

Marymount has operated for the past several years with having upwards of 97% of their students attending full time. This is almost completely unheard of with most other two-year institutions.

It is true that four-year institutions have a greater percentage of full-time students and that should also be factored in with regards to Marymount, I feel.

There is also a continuing discussion as to whether the intersection of Palos Verdes Drive East and Miraleste Drive needs signalization OR if the folks who use that intersection on a regular basis WANT signalization there.

While Marymount College officials contend they would pay for a portion of signalization of that intersection, they continue to bring up the fact that the intersection was 'warranted' to have signals placed before their project progressed this far. They continue to state they will pay their 'fair share' they also will remind all that the signals should probably have been places sometime ago, all at taxpayers' expense.

The largest and most vocal opponents to much of Marymount's plans belong to an organization called Concerned Citizens Coalition/Marymount Expansion (CCC/ME).

These folks have an alternative that I have written about and tried to talk to them about that simply is not possible.

CCC/ME members attend meetings and call for expanded off-campus housing at the college's Palos Verdes North site AND for the Athletic Department and large fields for students be placed at the Palos Verdes North site, too.

The actual proposal for that to happen has been nixed by both the college and many others.

Since Palos Verdes North sits in northern San Pedro/city of Los Angeles, the Planning Commission and City Council of the city of Rancho Palos Verdes have no jurisdiction over that site.

So Marymount College's administration and supporters are going forward. In terms of on-campus housing, adding more students to Palos Verdes North, or having large fields built there, they must be stopped!

With Ponte Vista still in play, the Volunteers of America moving forward with opening their housing, increased traffic along Western because of the portions of the Marymount Project already approved of, the growth in student population at Rolling Hills Prep and Mary Star of the Sea High School, added to increased traffic with four new eateries opening along Western in the area, those of us living on the east side of Rancho Palos Verdes, friends living in northwest San Pedro, and everyone else that uses Western Avenue, means that Marymount administration should not be allowed to impact OUR community as much as it is attempting to do.