Facility to Study Marine Life Included : School Board Has Big Plans for Ft. MacArthur

The Los Angeles Board of Education has instructed the school district staff to develop a detailed plan to use 52 acres of the former Ft. MacArthur in San Pedro as an educational park that would include a facility for the care and study of marine animals.

The anchor of the project would be a marine animal facility that the district is planning with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, the publishing firm and theme-park operator that bought Marineland in 1986 and closed it last year.

The seven-person board agreed last week that a detailed plan for the site should be prepared and presented to the board for approval before March 31.

The U. S. Department of Education has told the district that it risks loss of the property if it does not come up with an acceptable use plan by that date.

The federal government deeded the site to the district in 1979 with the stipulation that a high school be built on the land. Since then, federal officials have indicated that the district can retain the property if other acceptable educational uses for the site are found.

Joan Acosta, a consultant in the district’s Office of Government Relations, said the district is eager to develop an acceptable proposal for using the land.

“It’s ludicrous in this day and age to lose an asset,” she said of the spectacular ocean-view site, formerly known as the upper reservation of Ft. MacArthur.

The property is currently the home of the district’s San Pedro/Wilmington Skills Center, a vocational education facility for adults, and of Angel’s Gate Continuation High School. The district will continue to operate these facilities on the site.

According to an 11-page “conceptual proposal” presented to the board, district staff foresees the site as a multipurpose educational park that could benefit all the students in the district. Activities there would include outdoor education programs year-round and a retreat program for potential dropouts.

The new marine animal facility, which would be funded by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, would include a laboratory/classroom and a round-the-clock emergency facility for the treatment of wounded or stranded marine animals.

Dominic Shambra, the district’s administrator for special programs and activities, emphasized that the project would be educational in nature, not entertainment-oriented. “This won’t be a petting zoo,” Shambra said.

The proposal calls for creation of a nonprofit Foundation for Marine Animal Husbandry to coordinate the Ft. MacArthur project. The foundation’s board of trustees would be responsible to the Los Angeles Board of Education.

The preliminary proposal contained no estimates of the cost of the project or specific sources of funding. The board has requested such information, Shambra said.

Relocation on the Ft. MacArthur site of programs now leasing facilities elsewhere would save the district some money. Legislative and grant funding could also be sought.