ESCONDIDO - Four historical houses next to Escondido's Central School on West Fourth Avenue are ready to be moved so that the elementary school campus can expand, city officials said this week.

The Escondido Union School District bought the houses and about a third of an acre under them last year. School officials have said the land under the four houses will be used for more parking or more playground space.

Because the four homes were built before 1940 and are on the city's Local Register of Historic Places, school officials searched for months for a buyer so they would not have to be demolished.

Escondido businessman Benjamin Cueva, who agreed to buy the houses for $550, is planning to move them to two lots on Seventh Avenue next to Centre City Parkway.

The Seventh Avenue site has a white cottage on the corner that is also a pre-1940 building that needs to be either demolished or moved to make way for the four buildings.

After another long search, Cueva said Tuesday he has found a buyer for the white cottage and intends to move it within a week. He predicted that the houses near the school could be moved within a month.

"What we have here is a game of dominos," said city planner Paul Bingham.

Cueva, a Central School alumnus, has some experience restoring older Escondido homes. He said he bought a former Escondido mayor's house where the city library is now and moved it to his property at the north edge of the city.

To squeeze the four houses onto the Seventh Avenue lots, Cueva's Escondido engineering firm, Masson and Associates, had to apply for city permission in April to reduce the bordering space that will surround them, according to city planning documents.

Cueva must also install a sound barrier next to Centre City Parkway, a new fire hydrant and a cement drain in a nearby alley, he said.

"It looks like there is some light at the end of the long tunnel," he said.

On Tuesday, the houses near the school were fenced off and the foundations had been excavated.

Three of the four houses were built in a Mediterranean/Spanish Revival style around 1925 and have distinctive wrought-iron lamps and counterbalanced windows, Cueva said. They had some of their white stucco finish scraped off to prepare for the move.

"It has to get ugly before it can get pretty again," said Cueva, noting that the houses will surround a courtyard with a fountain. He is planning to rent one of the houses to friends who lived for years in the white cottage.

The fourth home - a two-story, green house facing Third Avenue - was built around 1920, according to Cueva. It is one of the few buildings in Escondido in the blocky "moderne" style.

- Contact staff writer Quinn Eastman at (760) 740-5412 or qeastman@nctimes.com.