Developer Offers Santa Ana a New Space-Saver School Site

Santa Ana Unified School District trustees were presented Wednesday with an alternative proposal for a “space-saver school,” an option proponents said could save the state as much as $15 million in land acquisition costs.

At a special meeting, the Board of Education heard a commercial developer’s plan to build an intermediate school at 2828 N. Bristol St., the site of a vacant and dilapidated 180-unit apartment building.

Because the item was not scheduled for a vote, the board took no formal action. But school board President Sal Mendoza, and board members Audrey Yamagata-Noji and Robert W. Balen expressed some reservations about the site.

There are “too many variables, too many unknowns,” Mendoza said.

Board members Rosemarie Avila and Tom Chaffee defended the proposal. “We would be delinquent not to consider this site,” Avila said.

Space-saver schools are built vertically, with several stories, so that they don’t take up large areas of land with single-story buildings.

The district is pursuing acquisition of property behind Bristol Marketplace to build the space-saver campus. The board has approved construction of an intermediate school at that site, and the state is prepared to pay as much as $21 million for the property.

Developer Jim Righeimer proposed Wednesday that the district consider building the space-saver project at the alternative site. Under his plan, a partnership that includes Righeimer would acquire the 15-acre site for $6.9 million and then sell 12 acres of that parcel to the district for the same cost.

Righeimer downplayed potential obstacles, which he said include annexing the property from the Orange Unified School District and some legal entanglements between the property owner and its current leaseholder.