Think your last school construction project was over budget and behind schedule? Take comfort in the latest news on the former Belmont Learning Center in Los Angeles.

The school complex, now known as Vista Hermosa, is finally scheduled to open next year—nine years late and more than $350 million over budget.

The total tab for the Los Angeles Unified School District is expected to be more than $400 million, undoubtedly making it the most expensive K-12 school construction project in the country.

The project began in the mid-1990s as a state-of-the-art high school complex to alleviate overcrowding and long bus rides for 5,000 students in the nearby low-income neighborhoods. But in 2000, poisonous gases were found underneath the site, a prime 34-acre parcel in downtown L.A. that was a former oil field. Construction resumed in 2002 after consultants determined a fan and vent system could alleviate the toxins, but the project was halted again later after the discovery of an earthquake fault line running across the property.

Eventually, then-Superintendent Roy Romer and the school board worked out a plan to demolish the buildings that sat on the fault line, scale down the size of the school to 2,600 students, and use part of the acreage for a community park.

Even as the project finally nears completion, the mention of Belmont is still synonymous with incompetence and bureaucratic waste—and many of the city’s politicians and editorial writers still relentlessly criticize district officials. So far, the project has been a headache for four LAUSD superintendents.

But some, including Romer, felt the project needed to be salvaged. And L.A. City Councilman Ed Reyes, who represents the area, recently said that the project would provide a much-needed school and park space for the nearby communities, even though the money should have been better spent.

“They probably could have built three more high schools, maybe four” with all the money spent, he told the Monterey County Herald in July. “That’s a very painful reality. I think 70 percent of the cost was not necessary.”

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor