Beverly Hills High Survives Razing Plan

Historic Beverly Hills High School has survived a controversial proposal that would have torn it down to make way for a high-rise development to raise money for the school district.

The Beverly Hills Board of Education decided that razing the 60-year-old school would be too disruptive and entailed too many “unanswered questions,” such as “traffic, tradition and maintaining open space,” board member Fred Stern said.

The board will continue to explore other ways to generate money for the district, which has a $27.6-million budget this fiscal year and projects an annual shortfall of about $1 million over the next three years.

Under the proposal, the district would have demolished the high school, which sits on a 27-acre site at the southwestern edge of Beverly Hills, near Century City. A modern, more compact high school then would have been built on the northern 19 acres of the site, and the remaining land, at Olympic Boulevard and Spalding Drive, would have been leased to a developer to construct an office and condominium complex.