MALDEF Supports Plan to Raze Hotel
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Attorneys for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund entered the fray Wednesday over the fate of the Ambassador Hotel, joining those who favor razing it to build a school.
MALDEF attorneys filed a legal brief to have their voice heard in the battle between the Los Angeles Conservancy and the Los Angeles Unified School District.
For the record:
12:00 a.m. Dec. 17, 2004 For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday December 17, 2004 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 74 words Type of Material: Correction
Ambassador Hotel -- An article in Thursday’s California section about legal battles over the Los Angeles Unified School District’s plans to raze most of the Ambassador Hotel mischaracterized the plaintiffs in a lawsuit. The suit was filed by the Committee to Preserve Assassination Sites, the Assassination Archives and Research Center and Sirhan Sirhan, who was convicted of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination -- not by those organizations on behalf of Sirhan, as the article said.
The L.A. school board voted in October to demolish most of the historic hotel, where movie stars mingled and Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, and build a $318-million school for 4,200 students in kindergarten through high school. The district plans to retain the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, a coffee shop and parts of the hotel’s Embassy Ballroom -- but little else.
The conservancy and a coalition of local organizations filed suits last month contending that the district had failed to comply with requirements of the state environmental quality law.
MALDEF’s action was taken on behalf of two area students, as well as Maxwell Kennedy, a son of Robert F. Kennedy, and community activist Paul Schrade.
Kennedy said he joined the MALDEF action because he believes “in the right of the children to have the finest school possible in the shortest amount of time possible. I think that it is unjustifiable and tragic that [the conservancy] has sued the school district to prevent them from building the school.”
The MALDEF brief contends that the conservancy’s suit has no merit and forces the district to waste taxpayer money by demanding that it restart the environmental review process.
The district has said it hopes to open the elementary portion of the school in 2008 and the rest a year later.
Conservancy officials, who want the district to preserve most of the Ambassador as part of the school, again said that the lawsuit would not delay the school project.
“Our position is very simple,” said Roland Wiley, conservancy board president. “We are not planning to delay this process one single day or cost LAUSD one single dollar in historic preservation.”
Another lawsuit has been filed by the Committee to Preserve Assassination Sites and the Assassination Archives and Research Center on behalf of Sirhan Sirhan, Kennedy’s assassin.
It contends that the district violated state law by failing to determine whether the pantry, where Kennedy was shot, would be preserved.
The district plans to appoint a panel to decide whether to preserve the pantry and how it would be done.
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