Daon Corp. to Transfer School Site to Vista District

Two years of bitter negotiations have yielded an agreement under which Daon Corp., developer of the sprawling Shadowridge Country Club residential community, will transfer to the Vista Unified School District a 35-acre site for a high school, it was announced Wednesday.

John Wiggins, the district’s assistant superintendent, said the $18-million high school, which will be built with money already allocated by the state, probably will open in the fall of 1987. It is needed, Wiggins said, to alleviate severe overcrowding at Vista High School, which was designed for 1,800 students but has an enrollment of 3,300.

The new high school will be on Melrose Drive within the Shadowridge development, due west of the golf course and one mile south of the county courthouse and jail. Wiggins said it would have an enrollment of about 1,500 students.

It will be the first high school built in San Diego County in this decade.

Upon its completion in the early 1990s, Shadowridge will have 3,590 single-family homes and will have an anticipated population of 10,000. Daon chose to donate the land in lieu of paying a $375-per-home “mitigation” fee for construction of schools for children living in the development.

“Obviously, it would have been easier to simply pay school fees as homes were developed over a period of years rather than set aside 35 acres of prime real estate within Shadowridge for the school,” said Bill Kennedy, Shadowridge project manager. “But this would not have provided the land which the district has often stated it desperately needs.”

Daon agreed in 1977, before beginning construction on Shadowridge, to dedicate the 35-acre site to the district and to construct roads and utility lines serving the school. But there was no date specified for completing the transaction, and Daon, faced with lagging sales at Shadowridge, had balked at completing the transfer of the land and paying off $5 million in various trust deeds on the property.

District officials have been negotiating with Daon for the last two years to complete the land transfer. Late last year, the district hired an attorney to begin litigation against the developer and threatened to withdraw Daon’s “letter of mitigation” for Shadowridge.

Had the letter guaranteeing that there would be sufficient school facilities for future residents of the subdivision been revoked, Daon would have been forced to suspend construction. Three of the six planned phases of the Shadowridge project have been completed.

“Within the last seven years, many things happened that had an effect on this agreement,” Wiggins said. “The real estate climate changed, and Daon was adversely effected. The corporation’s time line for connecting the streets and utilities became different from ours. But we faced a critical need for the high school site, so we had to take action.”