Alverno Head Calls Facility Usage Hullabaloo a “Mystery”
By Terry Miller
Published: Friday, October 2nd, 2009
City Holds Awards Dinner at School’s Facility despite Usage Firestorm
Alverno Head of School Ann Gillick stands outside the School's famous Villa Del Sol Del Oro. Neighbors of the school have begun pressuring the city council to deny plans for new campus facilities. - Photo by Terry Miller
To Ann Gillick, the head of the private girls’ school at Alverno in Sierra Madre, the substantial fuss and negative publicity over the use of facility and subsequent noise complaints is “a bit of a mystery.”
The school has been renting out its Villa Del Sol Del Oro facility to city departments for years at no charge, and the popular Sierra Madre Friends of the Library annual food and wine event is yet another example of how the school feels it helps out the community. They never charge rent for that event as well as many others throughout the year. What’s more, whenever there has been a problem or complaint from the community, Gillick says it is always been addressed and resolved quickly, such as noise from the school bell, which Gillick pointed out was a concern some years ago. In fact, Gillick says Alverno has been a good neighbor in Sierra Madre for 50 years, and that’s a fact of which the school has always been quite proud.
Ironically, it was after a heated city council meeting last Tuesday evening – during which much of the debate was centered on the noise factor at Alveno – that the City held its Volunteer Awards Ceremony at Alverno, just two nights later. Calls to the City of Sierra Madre in request for comment regarding their awards dinner were not returned.
Some Sierra Madre residents have taken it upon themselves to place signs – some all too reminiscent of the marathon Maranatha opposition – outside their homes near the historic Alverno Villa Del Sol Del Oro, purporting that Alverno is not a good neighbor. The scale of the complaints is considerably smaller but seemingly no less vocal.
Residents opposed to the plans to add new facilities to the school have voiced their opinions in no uncertain terms.
According to Gillick, additional monies, like those raised from the rental of these facilities, is needed for the school nonprofit school to survive. Parents pay an average of $11,000 per year for tuition for their girls to attend the small school of 230 girls. That figure is approximately half the average tuition for most private schools in the area. That’s why Alverno relies heavily on private funding such as renting out their grounds and facilities in order to stay afloat while still providing an education to area girls at an affordable cost.
The master plan Alverno began in 1959, and when the school opened in 1960 enrollment was twice the number of students as today. Ann Gillick says they could still add about 25% more students if other funding sources start drying up.
Alverno does not charge any nonprofit group in town for use of its facilities. The only temporary users that pay any sort of rent are commercial endeavors like film, television and commercial shoots, which bring in much needed money not only for the school but as well for the city, which charges for filming permits and the surrounding commercial neighborhoods that benefits from the added foot traffic large productions often bring along with them.
But with the current economy still set in a rather gloomy state (pun most certainly intended), this year has not been good to Alverno or the City of Sierra Madre. There has been no filming this year at Alverno. That money – often as much as $100,000 per year – is usually earmarked to help cover education costs as well as maintenance and renovations for the Villa facility.
Alverno staff says some residents might be “misreading” the school’s intensions. Gillick points out that the school is a girls’ school, and that there are no plans for use of the new soccer facility for football games.
“Our girls don’t play football,” said Gillick “We certainly have no plans of renting out the field for football.”
Gillick maintains that the proposed development would not expand the campus itself in any shape or form. So the issue seems not to be one of intrusive building, but rather of the potential for noise issues an complaints from the surrounding neighbors.
This latest permit request has spawned appeals by neighbors urging the city to deny it. And the dispute has only just begun, as attorneys talk over the school’s plans for a new building and athletic field, the no doubt costly debate could go on for years.
Alverno doesn’t have a reserve for such litigation, but will find a way to fight on if need be, Gillick assured the Sierra Madre Weekly on Monday.
“We’re taking the higher ground, what’s more important to me than the Alverno Master Plan is the education of our young women.”
In another sardonic twist, Alverno School is forced to hold one of its own school events in Pasadena next month to avoid any further noise complaints. They had to rent the Hilton in Pasadena. The issue is expected to be back in the council’s hands within a few weeks. No word yet on whether or not a coin toss will be used in determining the projects future.
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