Old School Site May Get a New Life : Education: Abandoned facility on Point Loma could be used for district offices if complex proposal gains approval.

There may at last be light at the end of the tunnel for San Diego city schools in the district’s seven-year quest to eliminate the eyesore of Dana Junior High School in Point Loma, boarded up but heavily vandalized since being closed because of declining enrollment.

Trustees agreed Tuesday to move forward with a plan to rehabilitate the once-pristine 13-acre site and consolidate there the offices of counselors, health workers and other administrators now spread throughout the city.

Dana’s massive auditorium would be made available for community use, and its sprawling playgrounds would be graded and seeded to provide new baseball fields for nearby, cramped Point Loma High School.

The estimated $6-million renovation cost would be paid for by leasing for private use at least three long-closed elementary schools whose space would be freed up by the administrative consolidation.

The proposal, which faces a still-lengthy but more certain path to reality than previous plans, also meets with the approval of key Point Loma community groups who have long battled the school trustees for a use acceptable to the majority of residents in the upscale, single-family neighborhood. Required local and state approvals, and construction, could take up to three years.

“It’s been the longest ongoing saga since I’ve been on the board,” school board President Kay Davis said Tuesday. The school was closed in June, 1983.

Davis, who is retiring after eight years representing the Point Loma area, was long vilified by neighborhood residents for pushing earlier residential development plans, and the contention over Dana’s future was considered a factor in her poor showing when she ran for the San Diego City Council three years ago.

“I made some mistakes early in the process.”

But all was peace and happiness Tuesday when Joni Halpern, representing the Dana Junior High School coalition, praised Davis for her latest efforts since the spring to put together the latest plan.

The dozen or so Point Loma activists at the school board meeting rewarded Davis with a round of applause.

In essence, the San Diego Unified School District plans to take its counseling services from Stevenson Elementary, its special education administrators from Whittier Elementary, as well as other resource specialists from sites in Southeast and East San Diego.

Stevenson, Whittier and the old Muir school in East San Diego would be leased to private users.

The district would issue $6 million worth of bonds to be paid for by lease payments from the other sites, J. V. Ward, district business services administrator said.

With board approval of the concept, schools Supt. Tom Payzant--who also has suffered his share of arrows over the years--said the district will proceed to draw up a contract for removing asbestos from the two-story school.

At the same time, planners will devise a specific plan for an architect to consider as well as prepare an environmental impact report.

The office of the state architect will have to approve final documents, which could take up to a year because of a longstanding backlog.

The Peninsula Planning Group endorsed the proposal Tuesday, but its hopes differed slightly from those of the Dana coalition.

The planning group would like a municipal pool to be built on the site, assuming that the city of San Diego could obtain funding through a a successful parks and recreation ballot measure.

Specifics will be worked out between the community groups and district administrators, Payzant promised.

“We don’t want to beat a dead horse any longer,” said Ward, another longtime participant in the Dana matter.

Trustee Shirley Weber assured Point Loma residents that the issue is important to other board members besides Davis, who will be leaving her post in December.

“We are committed, we don’t want to be slumlords,” Weber said.

Previous stillborn ideas to turn Dana into a useful enterprise included its renovation as a branch city library and as a community college continuing education center.

The library idea, floated in March, 1989, collapsed earlier this year because the city could not afford to meet the school district’s expected leasing requirements.

The community college idea fell flat in early 1989 because college trustees did not believe the estimated renovation cost they would bear would pay off in sufficient use by adult students.