Carlsbad

After nearly a month’s delay, the Carlsbad City Council has granted permission for construction to begin on an innovative 168-acre educational park and residential development planned for the bluffs north of Batiquitos Lagoon.

Last month, the council put the project on hold, saying the developer had not provided sufficient assurances that the project would be occupied by educational institutions and not become just another office park.

The council voted unanimously Tuesday to allow Sammis Properties to go forward with the first phase of the project--construction of 129 housing units--after the builder submitted leases or written contracts hammered out with six different schools that are scheduled to move into the Batiquitos Lagoon Educational Park.

Aside from the colleges, plans call for a hotel, several restaurants, convenience and retail stores, a convention center, office buildings and 600 homes along the rim of the site.

The schools planning to set up shop at the educational park are Chapman College, Claremont McKenna College, the New School of Architecture, the Batiquitos Music Conservatory, the Foundation for the 21st Century and the Foundation for the Private Sector.

Sammis Properties has already graded much of the property, a mesa east of Interstate 5. Construction of the housing units is set to begin in January, with work on the first section of the education park scheduled for spring. All six schools plan to begin operations at Batiquitos in the fall of 1987.