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Downtown Encinitas school site the topic of meeting
By: ADAM KAYE - Staff Writer | ∞
ENCINITAS -- Houses, offices and a historical schoolhouse are part of a development plan proposed for the old Pacific View School campus.
After more than a year of committee meetings, Encinitas Union School District officials said Wednesday that they are ready to disclose their latest thinking about what to do with the Third Street campus that closed as a school in 2003.
The district would like to trade the valuable site for commercial property that could be a source of income for its instructional program, said Superintendent Lean King.
But before any swap happens, the city would have to rezone the property and establish conditions that may limit what a developer could build, he said.
At a 10 a.m. Saturday public meeting at Paul Ecke-Central School, 185 Union St., district officials and consultants will present an advisory panel's suggestions, which include:
"It's a 180-degree turn from where we started a couple of years ago with the school district," said Steve Aceti, president of the Downtown Encinitas MainStreet Association and a member of the Pacific View Citizens Advisory Group.
That's when the district, under then-Superintendent Doug DeVore, unveiled plans to build 92,000 square feet of medical and dental offices. The plan met overwhelming objections from neighbors, who called the complex "Battlestar Galactica."
Officials scrapped the plan and, in one of King's first acts as the Encinitas superintendent in 2005, he created the advisory group to discuss what kind of project would be acceptable to neighbors, merchants and the school district.
All parties seem to agree on using 75 percent of the project for housing and 25 percent for offices, said Dee Snow, a planning consultant retained by the school district.
Snow is the wife of Bill Snow, a former member of the Encinitas Planning Commission.
Dee Snow said Wednesday that the advisory panel has proposed homes along Fourth Street, town houses along E Street and offices facing Third Street.
She said she expects the school district to approach the city with a proposal to rezone the land in March. The present zoning allows a school, governmental or medical offices.
"We want to make sure we really have consensus before we move forward," Snow said.
The final dismissal bell at Pacific View School rang in June 2003. At the time, officials said the school was too expensive to operate and was in poor condition. The location has been used for one kind of school or another for nearly a century.
The schoolhouse occupies a corner of the property and serves as Encinitas Historical Society's headquarters. When planning the site, the school could be moved to a more prominent location, Snow said.
-- Contact staff writer Adam Kaye at (760) 943-2312 or akaye@nctimes.com.
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