Simi Deal to Give District 1,800 Acres : Wood Ranch: Lots would be sold or developed to pay for a new elementary school to serve the development.

The Simi Valley school district will either develop or sell 680 vacant lots in Wood Ranch to finance an elementary school for the sprawling development, officials said Tuesday.

The district will get the 1,800 acres under an agreement scheduled for approval by the school board Tuesday, Supt. Mary Beth Wolford said. When completed, the land deal will take the place of a 1982 agreement by Wood Ranch’s financially troubled developer to pay $6.2 million to build the school.

“This is a very unique and very unusual settlement agreement, for a school district to receive this amount of property,” Wolford said.

School officials once expected to open the 500-student Wood Ranch Elementary School next fall to ease crowding at Madera School, already at capacity with more than 700 elementary schoolchildren, Wolford said.

But the developer, Olympia/Roberts Co., could not come up with the money for the new school. The original deal was part of a complex arrangement with city and school officials that allowed the developer to start building the Wood Ranch mini-city on 3,000 acres southeast of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

In supporting the revised deal, Wolford said the developers “could have left us with no school, no money and no property. They chose instead to sit down and hammer this out.”

School officials have not looked into how salable the land would be in today’s slumping real estate market, Wolford said. It could be several years before developers again have the borrowing power to buy huge swaths of land and build homes, she said.

Once the district comes up with the money, it would take two years to get a school built, she said.

In the interim, officials will consider using five existing buildings on a slice of land included in the deal for a temporary elementary school, Wolford said. A preliminary study indicates that the converted homes and cottages could house 120 students from kindergarten through third grade.

District officials have not decided which students would be allowed to attend the temporary Wood Ranch school and which would continue being bused to Madera, Wolford said.

“We’re going to get busy with it right away and make something happen,” Wolford said.

Board members Judy Barry and Diane Collins, who helped to negotiate the deal over the past eight months, said the agreement appears to be the only alternative to the dubious prospects of suing.

“It wasn’t how we originally planned, but it certainly is the best possible solution we could have come up with,” Barry said.

The district could develop the property in phases under a joint agreement with a developer and sell the residences, Wolford said. Or the district could sell the empty land in pieces, he said.

Olympia/Roberts has built 2,400 houses, condominiums and apartments in Wood Ranch, and had approvals to build an additional 1,500, including the land to be given to the school district.

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The developer encountered financial problems last year when its parent company, Olympia & York Developments Ltd., filed for court protection under Canadian bankruptcy laws.

As part of the new agreement, which was approved by the Simi Valley City Council on Monday, the city deferred for five years a $250,000 payment for Madera Road improvements that the developer has failed to make.

In exchange, the developer agreed to give the city 65 acres and to pay the city $6,000 each for future units it builds.

The community’s 18-hole tournament golf course will revert to Wells Fargo Bank in lieu of repayment of a $15-million loan. The bank has frequently announced plans to auction the course, most recently on Dec. 1, but the sales have been postponed.