http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_2365220...-lease-armenian

Parents and principals at Encino Charter Elementary school had long hoped to obtain an abandoned former firehouse next door to add an indoor gym and lunchroom and solve a dire parking shortage and dangerous student drop-off lane.

Only supporters were shocked to read a news report last spring that Los Angeles had agreed to lease its old Fire Station 83 for use as an Armenian cultural center. The price: $1 a year for half a century.

"It's basically a land grab," said Lisa Becker, a parent and board member of the Parent Teacher Organization at the LAUSD affiliated charter school. "How the city can justify giving them that property for $1 is beyond me.

"A child's safety should never be trumped by politics."

Since the city agreed to lease its vacant firehouse to the Armenian Cultural Foundation in May, a rising tide of residents and San Fernando Valley neighborhood groups have united against a deal they say was hatched in a back room without community input.

A petition to block the lease, Becker said, has raised more than 600 signatures. Meanwhile, tempers have reportedly flared between ethnic Armenian supporters of the deal and opponents at a recent neighborhood council meeting...