MOST OF AMBASSADOR HOTEL COULD BE RAZED 3 SCHOOLS PLANNED WHERE GLITTERATI ONCE PLAYED IN L.A.

Byline: Jennifer Radcliffe Staff Writer

Los Angeles Unified School District leaders announced plans Tuesday to raze most of the Ambassador Hotel and convert it into a campus for 4,200 students in kindergarten through 12th grade - enraging conservationists who say the structure where Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated should be preserved.

Superintendent Roy Romer and the board president, Jose Huizar, called the $318 million Heritage K-12 plan a compromise between conservation and the urgent need to build schools in the overcrowded midcity area.

``For many years, the Ambassador Hotel served as a playground for the rich, powerful and famous, and we will honor that,'' Huizar said at a news conference.

``However, we will look at the hotel and see the new future it has before it. It will now serve as a playground for children and the next generation of Angelenos.''

The plan, expected to be considered by the school board on Oct.12, calls for an elementary school, a middle school and a high school to be built on the Wilshire Boulevard site by 2008 or 2009. The integrated K-12 campus would feature 17 acres of open space, a state-of-the-art gymnasium and an Olympic-size swimming pool.

The campus would relieve overcrowding at Belmont and Los Angeles high schools, Berendo Middle School, and Hoover and Cahuenga elementary schools - campuses that average 1,185 students more than their designed capacity.

Under the plan, the famous Cocoanut Grove night club - where Hollywood stars once mingled with politicians and mobsters - would be converted into the campus auditorium.

A panel of experts would be appointed to consider ways to preserve the pantry area where Sirhan Sirhan fatally shot Kennedy in 1968, and an outdoor memorial park would be created to honor the senator.

The six-story main hotel building would be demolished, but the north side of the new schools would have facades to resemble the hotel's Wilshire Boulevard profile. The hotel's Paul Williams-designed coffee shop would become the teachers' lounge, and the Embassy Ballroom would be rebuilt as a library with its original ceiling preserved.

Leaders of the Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit group leading efforts to save the hotel, said the plan's preservation credentials are suspect.

``I think there really is a sleight-of-hand here,'' said Linda Dishman, Los Angeles Conservancy executive director. ``The kids will not have real history, and they're being taught that fake history is OK.''

But LAUSD officials said fully restoring the structure would lengthen work by as much as a year and add at least $50 million to the price tag. Most of the buildings are poorly constructed or damaged beyond repair, the ceilings are too low, the windows are too small, the paint is lead-based, and the walls are filled with asbestos, they added.

``If you really try to preserve it, what you're preserving is a concrete shell. When we saw that, we said that doesn't make sense,'' Romer said. ``Let's build it the way it ought to be. Let's rebuild it where it's safe. Let's rebuild it in a way that will withstand earthquakes. And then we said, hey, let's add the features that will remind us of the old hotel.''

Built 83 years ago, the hotel was a favorite frolicking ground for Hollywood's glitterati, from Charlie Chaplin to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio stayed there, as did Albert Einstein, who once called the front desk to complain of a fight next door - which turned out to be between boxer Jack Dempsey and his new bride, whom he apparently was trying to throw out the window.

Thousands of Angelenos attended proms, birthday parties and concerts at the hotel before it closed in the 1980s. The school district bought the property in 2001 for $76.5 million, ending a 12-year battle with developers who included Magic Johnson and Donald Trump.

LAUSD currently makes more than $1 million a year renting the hotel to movie companies. Scenes from ``Catch Me If You Can,'' ``Pretty Woman'' and dozens of other movies were shot at the Ambassador.

School board member David Tokofsky said the decision to go ahead with the plan is far from certain. He said he does not support the lack of conservation and the high number of students being placed on the site.

And Dishman said supporters will continue to flood board members with letters urging them to save the hotel. It could be an amazing partnership, she said.

``It's a real missed opportunity. There was such an opportunity for this to be a nationally recognized school.''

Jennifer Radcliffe, [phone]

jennifer.radcliffe(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

photo, map

Photo:

Most of the Ambassador Hotel would be razed and three schools would be built at the site under a plan to be aired Oct. 12.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer

Map:

Ambassador Hotel site