53.7 F
San Diego
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
-Advertisement-

Chula Vista Advances Plans for University

Chula Vista, the county’s second largest city, has long dreamed of building a four-year university, and those dreams got a bit closer to becoming reality when it recently entered into a negotiating agreement with developer HomeFed Corp. to explore a wider pact to create the long desired project.

Earlier this month, the city approved an exclusive negotiating agreement with HomeFed to devise an overall management development agreement. The latter would define how a 375- acre project in the southeastern part of the city will be planned, conveyed, controlled and financed.

Mayor Cheryl Cox said the latest step is one more piece in a long process of attracting a four-year university here along with a high-tech business park.

“This is just another piece of this plan that’s coming together,” Cox said. “Now we can see it from here, and it’s within our reach.”

Going back to the 1980s, Chula Vista sought to build a four-year school in the sprawling hills near the U.S. Olympic Training Center. The big difference today is that the city appears to be close to assembling all the land needed for the project.

It owns 140 acres, and has agreements to obtain the remaining property from two landowners: Otay Land Co. (owned by HomeFed Corp.), and the Baldwin brothers’ Otay Ranch Co.

Agreements between the city and those landowners arranged in 2008 and amended in 2010, call for the property to be conveyed to the city in return for the developers receiving enhanced density ceilings and expedited permit processing when the housing market rebounds in earnest.

It wasn’t long ago when the city was vying for a new University of California campus, but the state awarded the site to Merced in 1995.

Financial Barriers

The city also attempted to attract San Diego State University to the site five years ago for an annex site, but California’s serious money problems exacerbated by the recession made the possibility of attracting any state college fairly remote, Cox said.

“The likelihood of getting a university that is privately owned is greater than getting a full scale UC or CSU school here,” she said.

Other discussed options are collaborating with the Sweetwater Union High School District to build a school at the site, and developing a satellite campus from a CSU, UC or a private university.

Southwestern College, the South Bay’s sole community college, is another possible participant. In 2008, area voters approved maximum bonding of $389 million for a variety of capital improvements at the college, including $20 million for a satellite campus.

“We’re interested in being a partner with the city on this project and attracting other universities,” said Southwestern College spokeswoman Lillian Leopold.

Along with a new university, Chula Vista would also like to develop part of the land for some sort of high-tech business park.

Potential Student Body

According to a feasibility study done for the city about two years ago, the South Bay region has sufficient high school students in the pipeline to support an additional four- year school. However, the study also noted that of the 2008 graduating class of seniors in the Sweetwater district, only a third qualified for either a CSU or UC system college.

Cox said she would like Chula Vista to emulate what occurred in San Marcos starting in 1989 when the SDSU’s North County campus there was transformed to CSU’s 20th university. Today, the college on 304 acres has about 10,000 students, and operates a satellite campus in Temecula.

HomeFed Corp., an entity spawned from the failure of HomeFed Bank and a public company based in Carlsbad, owns and is developing local residential properties at San Elijo Hills in San Marcos, and Otay Ranch in Chula Vista. In January 2011, the company acquired 2,600 areas of land in Santee known as Fanita Ranch. Development of that property is tied up due to lawsuits challenging the city’s environmental impact report on the project.

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

Oberon Eyes Europe for Renewable DME

Leaders of Influence in Law 2024

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-