Mount St. Mary’s Out of Control Growth

by Webmaster — February 1, 2019

Community in Crisis

Mount Saint Mary’s (MSM) opened its Chalon Campus in 1930 on a prominent ridge in the residentially zoned neighborhood of Bundy Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains. The City issued permits for MSM to operate a small private girls College with a maximum of 500 students “for school use involving educational subjects only.” Over the next 50 years, MSM added buildings and increased enrollment to 750 students. A January 1984 City approval capped enrollment at 750 students and concluded that any future enrollment increases would be tied to the construction of a parking structure to ensure future enrollment would not grow in an ad hoc fashion.

In the summer of 1984, MSM applied to build the parking structure, however it did not request an enrollment increase. That was confirmed by Allyn Rifkin, the City’s Transportation Bureau Chief for the project at the time, “From the project description it is clear that the request was to build a parking structure and not for an enrollment increase. If the permit was to provide for increased student enrollment, LADOT would have required further assessment of the added vehicle trips…” The City has never approved any enrollment increase above 750.

Despite the lack of any City approval, MSM has since doubled its enrollment to 1,500 students, which generates over 2,000 vehicle trips up and down Bundy Canyon’s narrow roads daily. It has also commercialized the campus, advertising and profiting from leased events and film shoots for decades. The unauthorized students and commercial activities have brought tens of thousands of additional vehicles to our winding, narrow canyon roadways. This has added to the gridlock on Sunset Blvd, and increased fire risk in a state-designated Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone.

MSM now proposes to build a 38,000 sq. ft. Wellness Pavilion and Events Center – tripling currently permitted enrollment to 2,244 – and adding commercial events: summer camp, speaker series, other leased wellness and sports events, in addition to its current leasing for filming, conferences, workshops, seminars, retreats, and other activities, with hundreds of attendees per event.

The LA Department of City Planning is currently reviewing this proposed expansion, however, the information contained in MSM’s environmental documents is flawed. These grave errors prevent the community from being able to properly analyze the real and significant negative impacts of this massive expansion and the City has a responsibility to provide the public with accurate information inits environmental documents.

Please join us in requesting that the City addresses the fundamental errors in MSM’s documents and click here to send a message to the City.

Documents

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