Home Depot to Build Store on School Land

Home Depot plans to build a large store on 10 acres of land at Golden West Street and Warner Avenue that the company has agreed to lease from Huntington Beach Union High School District, school officials confirmed this week.

The land, formerly the site of an alternative school, is near the district’s Ocean View High at Warner and Gothard Street. School officials said Home Depot will relocate athletic fields now on part of those 10 acres to other school property near Ocean View.

“We are not selling the land,” Assistant Supt. Patricia Koch said. “At the end of the lease, all the improvements belong to the school district.”

Under the agreement, Home Depot would lease the 10 acres for 20 years at a cost of $480,000 annually. The company would be able to seek five-year extensions of the lease, and the school district would be able to raise the rent based on increases in the Consumer Price Index.

The school district, which would use the proceeds for facilities at all of its public high schools, has been seeking to lease the unused land for about eight years, Koch said.

The city has encouraged the district to seek a commercial lease for the land as a way of bringing new sales-tax revenue to Huntington Beach. Assistant City Administrator Ray Silver said the Home Depot store could generate as much as $200,000 a year.

Koch said construction on the project probably won’t begin until 1997 because Home Depot, which will move from a location at Golden West and Edinger Avenue, has not yet acquired the city permits it needs to build on the land.