School Board Candidates Talk Parking Lot Development

School board candidates— and incumbents and —participated in a candidate forum Friday night at the It was hosted by Vecinos de South Pasadena, the and the League of Woman Voters.

Next up: What do you think are the best ideas for development of the SPUSD parking lot, and how do they fit with any downtown redevelopment? What are your recommendations for the SPUSD administration building?

Richard Sonner

The City has developed a Mission Street specific plan that applies to the district parking lot., which the back of our property faces the front of Mission Street. So as far as the design and use of any development in the district parking lot, it has to go along with the City code and the City plans—Mission Street Specific Plan.

From my perspective, my focus is on the schools. I would like to take an underutilized resource and use it to generate permanent revenue for our students. I don’t want it to be temporary revenue. I want to respect the community and make sure it’s developed consistent with the community’s views. I want to cooperate with the City and let them—and the community—be in charge of deciding what’s best on the property given the parameters I have from the student perspective.

As far as the district administrative building, there have been no proposals to redo those. All the proposals that came in dealt with the parking lot alone.

Ben Figueroa

I think we need to look at all our options; however, it’s difficult to consider this property. Every property is South Pasadena is really a treasure, and we shouldn’t make decisions quickly.

I know we are short on dollars, but if there are other ways to do this I would be in favor of that. If we have to sell the property, I would endorse setting up an escrow or endowment so it pays over time.

This is the work I have done for the last 20 years—public and private financing, bond financing. Making sure that property gets leased or sold and it’s done according to the values of the campus. The future use—I don’t want to lose money in the use of that site forever and ever, so we need to be careful as we go forward.

Joe Loo

This property, we have gotten several proposals and there is a committee who is reviewing this. I do think we need to align with the Mission Street Plan from the City, and we will evaluate that. 

And as a lot of projects, we are going to take input from the City. Once the committee meets again, they are going to meet with the residents of the community—before they meet even with the board—take their input and present that to the board. So we are going to have a lot of input from community groups, from the City,  and I think we are going to do a good job to get a good revenue stream.

None of the plans have ruminations for the administration building, but I would like to see that adjustment made, so we can have a better building for our staff and administration—because that needs to be done also.

But I would like to see a revenue stream for us, for our school district, and I think we are going to get that from the property and have a good committee to review.