EDITORIAL CUTTING LOSSES.

THANKS to an overheated real-estate market and a shortage of downtown property, the Los Angeles Unified School District can redeem some of the $166 million it wasted on the Belmont Learning Center.

Because the 35-acre property rests atop a leaky oil field and an earthquake fault, it will never be the massive high school the district once envisioned. But real estate experts say it could still become an apartment complex, an office park, a shopping mall - and a large cash infusion for the LAUSD.

Unlike public schools, private developments are not subject to the stringent requirements of the state's Field Act. And unlike the LAUSD, private developers would mitigate problems before they start bulldozing the property.

According to downtown consultant Larry Kosmont, the property could fetch $60 million on the open market, enough to recoup what the district paid for the land in the first place.

Of course there's no recouping the more than $100 million the district wasted trying to develop the star-crossed project, but that's a given. At this point, the LAUSD should be happy to get anything back.

It's time for the LAUSD to cut its Belmont losses.

Actually, it was time for the LAUSD to cut its Belmont losses long ago, especially in 1999, when the school board scrapped the project for the first time. But then, at Superintendent Roy Romer's urging, the board resurrected the deal and blew millions of dollars more before news of the seismic dangers rendered the project DOA at the beginning of this month.

Yet, amazingly, there are some within the LAUSD who still nurse the idea of building a school on Belmont - not the mammoth project of old, but a smaller campus on a 12-acre portion of the property that sits on bedrock.

Apparently some LAUSD officials haven't learned from their mistakes. The repeated failures, the millions wasted, the public confidence betrayed haven't been enough to convince them that the Belmont property is just not the place to build a school.

The health and financial hazards are too great, and the public won't trust any LAUSD Belmont project, no matter what assurances come from downtown. Those assurances have fallen flat too many times before.

The district could use the $60 million it would make by selling off the land far more than its students could use an overpriced and contaminated campus. The LAUSD should sell off Belmont and be done with it once and for all.