Blog: Our Questions for Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy

On October 9, 2012, Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy (FSHA) issued a 70-page Draft Specific Plan document on their plans for campus expansion. But they included few details about how broadly the property and our neighborhood can be used and configured to generate revenue, sponsor banquets and hold other special events completely unrelated to the day-to-day operations of a high school.

We know FSHA is a wealthy and well-established institution with accounting gross revenues in excess of $10,000,000 per year, with vast resources at its disposal to mitigate against potential adverse conditions of the proposed project and to be able to respond to simple due diligence questions.  Protect LCF, a coalition of local homeowners who live in the area adjacent to FSHA, is asking the school's administrators to answer ten such questions about their future plans.  

1. Is FSHA saying that it needs to change the law and get a specific plan or zone just to incorporate their massive project and expansion?

2. Who is receiving these extraordinary rights and benefits under a Specific Plan? Are just the Dominican Sisters or FSHA receiving these rights or benefits, or will the benefits be attached to and run with the land and given to any future owner?

3. Is FSHA really proposing to build a facility bigger than the Sport Chalet Town Center complex in the middle of a residential neighborhood that is on top of 2 miles of winding, narrow roads with hairpin turns that are unlit?

4. Once FSHA builds out a complex bigger than the Sport Chalet Town Center with hundreds of parking spaces, can Planning Director Stanley freely modify the project?

5. Does FSHA propose to serve alcohol as it did this summer when it rented out its outdoor theater?

6. Is FSHA asking for a “blank check” to sanction and make legitimate all of its current uses whether they are legal or illegal?

7. How can FSHA ask the City Council to make all current uses legal and legitimate when FSHA has not even enumerated for the City precisely what activities it conducts at 440 St. Katherine?

8. Has FSHA admitted that it is violating the City's law today with an illegal number of students exceeding the legal number of 385 students? Has FSHA ever apologized for breaking the City’s law and the trust of its neighbors?

9. If FSHA is not increasing in size, why is FSHA requesting a new enrollment cap larger than its current 385 enrollment cap and an auditorium capacity of 512? If there is going to be no increase in size and there is going to be carpooling and a transportation plan, why is FSHA building a 4-story parking lot with 287 parking spaces in total, and another 97 parking spaces on a blacktopped lot on Palmerstone that can be made permanent?

10. Does FSHA pay property or income tax to support the City roads and government that it is over-burdening with its proposed expansion?  Are the vast majority of FSHA students from families that live in the City and pay property taxes that support the City?

For Protect LCF's answers to these questions, and for more information, please visit our website at http://protectlcf.nationbuilder.com or email us at protectlcf@gmail.com