ORANGE : Action on School Building Urged

Trustees of the Orange Unified School District have issued an ultimatum to the city of Orange and Chapman University: Buy their old district headquarters for the university’s new law school or lose it.

Chapman officials have long considered the four-acre site across from the university’s main campus on Glassell Street as an ideal setting for the permanent home of their law school, which began classes last month at a temporary site in Anaheim. The university has been contemplating where to build the permanent campus over the past year.

Orange redevelopment officials are considering buying the old headquarters for $2.4 million as part of a plan to entice the prestigious campus, and accompanying benefits, to the city. Redevelopment agencies in Anaheim and Garden Grove also are competing for the law school, designing their own incentive packages.

But Orange Unified trustees said last week they were tired of waiting and voted 7 to 0 to consider alternate uses for the site if negotiations with the law school have not concluded by their Nov. 8 meeting.

“I have the feeling that it’s been grinding along for a while, and we are on the outside looking in,” trustee Robert H. Viviano said. “There has to be some point where we are a player or we’re not.”

Chapman University President James Doti said the deadline made him “a little nervous,” but it might move things along.

“It’s positive in that a deadline will lead all the parties involved to come to a decision,” he said.

The old headquarters, built in the 1920s with an elaborate Spanish facade, was put on the federal registry of historic places in 1993.

The district largely abandoned the site three years ago because of seismic instability, and officials put it on the market last January.