School Board Awards Knob Hill Lease

With a unanimous vote, the Redondo Beach Board of Education decided Tuesday to award a lease of the ’s surplus property at 320 Knob Hill Ave. in South Redondo Beach to the highest bidder.

Fountain Square Development West, unanimously approved as the highest responsible bidder by the school board members, plans to build an assisted-living facility on the property.

Last week, the developers outbid Via Almar Properties, another group of developers whose plan proposed a boutique hotel and condos with recreational facilities, with an offer of $614,250 annually.

The school board members adjourned that meeting until Tuesday night to give them an opportunity to go over the bids in greater detail.

A few residents at the meeting voiced their opposition to awarding the lease to Fountain Square; the residents want the property to remain zoned as a school and consider it a public asset.

“In terms of the citizens, (it’s) the taxpayers who the losers are,” said North Redondo Beach resident Holly Osborne on Tuesday. “And that’s us, the residents, if a public facility gets taken away from us.”

Representatives of Fountain Square said they would not be opposed to keeping one of the buildings included in the leased property as a preschool.

One of the other problems the residents brought up that was addressed by the representatives was about possible traffic generated by the facility. The representatives said the traffic would be less than half of what would be deemed significant.

Although the value of the property taxes has yet to be determined, when asked by school board member Todd Loewenstein what the average monthly cost per resident would be to stay in the facility, the representatives said it would cost about $5,000 per resident.

Fountain Square officials also said they expect about 75 percent occupancy within the first year the assisted-living facility is open for business.

Additionally, although the property is being leased and not sold, residents took issue with the potential length of the lease.

Fountain Square officials said they would be seeking the maximum 99-year lease for the future assisted-living facility.

“The fact that you’re leasing it for 99 years—well, we’re all going to be dead then,” Osborne said. “So that to me is just the same thing as selling.”

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