SAN DIEGO COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Point Loma’s Reason to Rejoice

Next to efforts to move Lindbergh Field, the nasty controversy over the fate of shuttered Dana Junior High School may be the longest- running public affairs saga on Point Loma.

But that may soon change. Dana’s fate appears almost settled--to just about everyone’s satisfaction. That would be a coup for the school system and a significant improvement for a community that has lived with this eyesore since Dana closed in 1983.

Under a plan endorsed by San Diego city school trustees Tuesday, Dana will be rehabilitated at a cost of $6 million and converted to offices for school personnel scattered throughout the city. Dana’s auditorium would be made available to the community and its fields improved for use by Point Loma High School.

The school system would float bonds to fund the project, paying them off by leasing at least three other former school sites, probably to public or private educational institutions in search of classroom space. Administrators now working in those schools would be moved to Dana.

Needless to say, this idea is vastly preferable to the district’s original plan to lease the 13-acre Dana site to condominium developers for 99 years. This way, Dana will remain a public facility, its ball fields doubling as play areas. High-density housing will not be shoehorned in among single-family homes.

Years of vandalism and the school district’s own cannibalizing of the facility are prime causes of the $6-million rehabilitation price tag. Hindsight is easy, but if the district had moved more slowly with plans to demolish the school for developers, more of the building might have been preserved. There’s a lesson here in the value of listening more closely to community members who, from the beginning, opposed transfer of a school building out of public hands.

The Point Lomans who rallied to save the site can savor the fruits of their activism. By 1993, they may have a refurbished public building that the community can use--not resent. These days, few development battles end that way.