Huntington Beach Board Deadlocks on School Site Plan : Development: Proposed housing tract on Bushard Elementary property splits Planning Commission.

The Planning Commission has deadlocked over a controversial proposal to build 58 homes on the site of the now-closed Bushard Elementary School.

Because of the commission’s 3-3 vote, the proposal moves to the City Council next month. Commission members were divided between competing concerns of the Fountain Valley School District and those of hundreds of neighborhood residents.

The school district proposes to sell the 10-acre site at 9800 Yorktown Ave. to Fountain Valley Partners, which would demolish the school and build a housing tract. District officials say they need the money from the property to help cope with the financial pinch that is affecting schools.

Area residents contend, however, that the school site is needed as a neighborhood park, where youth sports and other activities can be held. A petition opposing the development and signed by 556 residents was presented to the commission at an earlier public hearing.

Proponents of the housing development noted that an elementary school and a small neighborhood park are next to the closed school site. Those sites would remain if the planned community is built, providing eight acres of open space.

But opponents and half the voting commission members said the Bushard parkland and the classrooms it provides for community programs are still needed.

City staff members, who recommend that the housing development be approved, note that the land is zoned for single-family homes.

The development would include 58 single-family homes and a 13,000-square-foot recreation center in a planned community with a gated entrance and private streets.

Commission members Kirk Kirkland, Victor Leipzig and Susan Newman sided with the residents’ position and opposed the development. The other voting members--Ken Bourguignon , Shirley Dettloff and Roy Richardson--disagreed, saying they believe the development would help the community more than it would harm it by providing sorely needed money for the school district.