Multimillion-Dollar Plan for School Site : Redondo Beach: Sports complex on Aviation High School campus will cost city taxpayers more than $6 million to build.

Six years after Redondo Beach’s politically divisive vote to save part of the old Aviation High School campus from commercial development, the City Council on Tuesday approved a multimillion-dollar plan for the site that will feature two new pools, two tennis courts and an upgraded auditorium and gym.

The plan would also retain the popular quarter-mile clay track and infield at the behest of runners who complained that the narrower, asphalt running “trail” proposed by a consultant would have been too small for training.

Additionally, one of the new pools will include a diving pool for synchronized swimmers and for competitive and scuba divers.

The plan for the facilities, which will cost city taxpayers more than $6 million to build and about $475,000 a year to operate, is a variation on one of three blueprints submitted last year to the city by its Los Angeles consultant, Economic Research Associates.

The proposals featured everything from restaurants and health clubs for the former high school campus to soccer, softball and Little League fields.

The council’s decision gives priority to open space but leaves the site potentially short of parking space. The plan was applauded by about 100 swimmers, joggers, grade-school basketball players and other local athletes who had come for the last of three public hearings on the project.

George Cable, a coach in the Youth Basketball program currently housed in the Aviation gym, told the council that local runners and high school athletes “would be lost” without the clay track. Without a family-oriented recreational complex, Cable said, “Redondo Beach will just become a resort for rich, single people.”

The decision brings the city a step closer to realizing a goal set in 1984, two years after the high school, which is on the city’s north side, was closed due to declining enrollment. Fearing that the school would be demolished and commercial development would rise in its place, a small cadre of residents put a plan on the ballot to limit development on 11 acres of the campus that included the key school buildings and the best access to major streets.

The measure passed by just two votes after a campaign that was among the most emotional and politically divisive in city history. The site, which has been leased for 99 years to the city by the South Bay Union High School District, now is used mostly by local theater groups that present plays in the auditorium and by TRW employees, who work out in the gym.

The acreage around it, which also was once part of the campus, is now the Redondo Beach Business Court, a massive office complex that includes TRW’s Space Park. Occasionally, those attending events at the campus are permitted to park on TRW land.

Council members said the city may have to negotiate a formal arrangement with TRW for parking because the plan approved Tuesday includes only about 330 parking spaces, far fewer than will be needed if several major events are scheduled at Aviation at the same time.

City Manager Tim Casey said staffers will return to the council in about two months with revised plans and financial proposals for underwriting the Aviation project. However, he said, it could be two years or more before the proposed recreational complex is finished.