Fountain Day School Employees Accuse Faring Capital of Retribution After Developer Locks West Hollywood Parking Lot

Tori Hatch had a word for what happened to the parking lot Fountain Day School has used for decades. 

Retribution.

The West Hollywood City Council was meeting Monday night to consider an appeal of the Bond Hotel project, a proposed seven-story mixed-use development at 7811 Santa Monica Boulevard. Fountain Day School sits next door.

Tori Hatch works at Fountain Day School, which has operated on Orange Grove Avenue for nearly 70 years. She told the council that Faring Capital, the developer behind the Bond Hotel project next door, locked a 45-space surface lot that school families had relied on for drop-off — and did it in a way she said was designed to hurt the school for stepping out of line.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The notice went to the City on Good Friday, one business day before the lot was locked. The school found out from a neighbor.

Monday morning parents pulled up and the lot was gone. Orange Grove backed up. A Fountain Day dad named Ross said he sat there 20 minutes trying to figure out how to safely get his kids to the door.

“Faring is proving they don’t care about the community,” he said. He hadn’t planned on coming to the council meeting that night. Then the morning happened and he did.

Angela DiSilva, who lives on Orange Grove, showed up unplanned too. She had her toddler Dash, in a stroller with her. She said she was supportive of the project — until Monday morning. “I want housing. I want [a] fabulous West Hollywood. I want gorgeous hotels. I was all for this,” she said. “And now, all of a sudden, I pull up today, and there’s nowhere to park, and I’m scared of what’s gonna happen.”

Michael Carter who was appealing the project emailed some residents that morning saying he and his wife went to the school and called parking enforcement, putting them on high alert during drop-off hours. Parents were “fit to be tied,” he wrote. All street parking was in the red. A Fountain Day staff member came outside and told Carter what the developer had said: “Support our project or we will take our parking lot.”

Hatch said it started when the school quietly asked the City about a possible historic designation for the property. Faring found out. After that, she said, Stevens came to the school with conditions for keeping lot access — sign a letter he drafted, send it to the council, show up Monday night with parents opposing the Bond Hotel appeal.

“This was not a suggestion,” she said. “It was presented as a requirement.”

The school refused. One day’s notice to the City, lease terminated. Again the school heard from a neighbor, not Faring.

Faring put a banner on the locked lot with a property owner’s cell number. “Need parking, call Scott.”

“As educators, we teach children every day that bullying is unacceptable,” Hatch said. “And yet we have experienced exactly that throughout this process. Pressure, intimidation, retaliation. All directed at a preschool.”

Jake Stevens had an explanation in rebuttal. The school owners weren’t reachable when he called, he said.

They were on a ski lift.

He said no legal agreement for the lot ever existed, Fountain Day has no legal drop-off operation of its own, and Faring had been losing money on the lot for 18 years without raising the rate once. “That is not my problem,” Stevens said.

Earlier in the hearing Stevens had waved off testimony from Fountain Day staff members, telling the council they were just “administrative folks who answer the phone and open the door” and that only the school’s owners counted as legitimate voices. Evelyn Johnson Jr., who has worked at the school as admissions director for 16 years, was one of those staff members.

His combative and at times rude tone didn’t go unnoticed.

During the break between public comment and deliberations, witnesses in the council chambers told WEHOonline that Stevens was having “a meltdown.”  One resident asked, “Why was Jake Stevens displaying outrageous behavior when he knew he was gonna win anyway? His behavior was really unprofessional and I wonder if Faring knows how bad he is and maybe they should hire someone else to represent their company.”

Mayor John Heilman said during deliberations that Stevens’ “unnecessarily combative attitude” throughout the hearing didn’t help his credibility.

Councilmember John Erickson asked Stevens whether Faring would reopen the lot for school families until construction begins. Stevens said he’d made eight or nine attempts to reach ownership last week and was ignored. He committed to a meeting at City Hall.

Fox 11 was outside chambers before the vote, interviewing appellant representatives Anita Gaswami and Victor Omelczenko.

The council voted 4-1 to deny the appeal and approve the Bond Hotel project. Councilmember Lauren Meister dissented.

The City honored Fountain Day at its Leadership Awards last month. The school has operated in West Hollywood nearly 70 years.