![]() ![]() ![]() The project, called the Valley Academic & Cultural Center, will bring the theater arts and media arts departments into a single complex. The main theater at Los Angeles Valley College. Valley College is at the center of the lawsuit by the project's construction firm. Salazar in turn filed a whistleblower complaint, alleging retaliation for outing problems in the program, but it was dismissed by the district’s bond monitor. In his performance evaluation of Salazar, Rodriguez rated him highly in nine of 12 categories including accomplishments, job knowledge and problem solving, but said the executive’s leadership, communication and judgment fell short, resulting in “diminished confidence” in him among trustees and an overall evaluation of unsatisfactory. ![]() District Chancellor Francisco Rodriguez has said that reforms launched since then, including an independent bond monitor, have prevented mismanagement from recurring.īut in 2019, Rodriguez fired the district’s chief facilities executive, David Salazar, after he raised red flags about cost overruns in the $3.3-billion construction bond program that voters had approved in 2016. In 2011, The Times documented financial waste, nepotism and mismanagement in several district projects funded with bond measures. ![]() The district’s Board of Trustees voted last month to place a $5.3-billion bond measure - its largest ever - on the November ballot. That program has been funded by four separate construction bond measures totaling $9.5 billion approved by voters since 2001. The district, which educates 220,000 students on nine campuses in the largest community college system in the nation, has long been embroiled in controversy over its massive construction program. Pinner Construction officials examine the rain gutter system at their theater project at Los Angeles Valley College. and its subcontractors, according to the arbitration report obtained by the Times. The arbitrator ordered the district to pay $3.2 million in compensation to Pinner Construction Inc. After prolonged arguments over who is to blame, an independent arbitrator concluded in April that the Los Angeles Community College District was primarily at fault for the delays and violated state requirements for "good faith and fair dealing" in construction contracts. It has racked up $12 million in unanticipated costs. The $82-million center will enrich the education of Valley students - who are largely low-income and the first in their families to attend college - with marketable skills for the region’s creative industries and provide intimate performing spaces for the diverse artistic community, according to Jennifer Read, chair of the college’s theater department.īut since its 2016 groundbreaking, the project has been beset with troubles. The sleek new center at Los Angeles Valley College will have four indoor theaters, an outdoor amphitheater, classrooms, a newsroom, a radio station and faculty offices across 103,000 square feet of glass, steel, concrete and wood. It’s billed as one of the most expansive theater and media arts spaces among community colleges in California. A Los Angeles Valley College theater project has been deliberately delayed to enrich consultants, a lawsuit alleges. ![]()
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