San Juan Planners OK School

San Juan Capistrano officials took the first step this week toward construction of the town’s first public high school in four decades.

The Planning Commission this week recommended that the school be built in the hills on the eastern edge of the city and that Whispering Hills, an accompanying upscale housing tract, be scaled back.

The tract should be no larger than 155 units, less than half the 356 homes that developer Dennis Gage had proposed, city officials agreed.

“This analysis has been exhausting and exhaustive,” said Larry Lawrence, consulting project manager for the city.

The developer had asked for permission to build 356 homes in the foothills east of Interstate 5. An alternative called for 193 homes and a high school.

A citizens group against large-scale development in the hills is urging the city to consider an even more scaled-down version--103 homes and a high school--that would spare one of the two canyons that would be affected by Whispering Hills.

The project will go before the City Council on Tuesday, but city staff is advising the council to delay a vote until June 4 to permit time for more study.

The envisioned high school, which would be called San Juan Hills, is scheduled to open in 2005. Capistrano Union High School, a block from the historic mission in the center of town, closed in 1963. The new school is being financed in part by a $65-million bond approved in 1999.