ENCINITAS – Before closing in 2003, Pacific View Elementary School had been used as an educational campus for more than a century, but there is no requirement that the land remain a school.
The school district has proposed turning over the property to a developer who would build homes and offices as part of a land swap, though talk has resurfaced over whether the city could buy it for a park.
Some residents hoped the original deed might not allow development. When people donate land for a school, they sometimes include stipulations that the property can only be used for an educational purpose.
“My whole life I've just heard people say they thought there was something like that,” Councilman Dan Dalager said. “It was sort of an urban legend we grew up with.”
But the one-page, handwritten deed from town founder John S. Pitcher to the Encinitas School District in 1883 shows no conditions. The San Diego Union-Tribune obtained a copy through a search of county records on microfilm.
Councilwoman Maggie Houlihan said that if there were deed restrictions, someone probably would have uncovered them by now. “There were some folks that thought there were (restrictions), so the fact that we know for sure is important,” she said.
Pitcher is known as “the father of Encinitas,” said Diane Welch, a history buff and freelance writer from Solana Beach. A Midwesterner, Pitcher originally came to the area to help locate a site for a new train station.
He acquired a large amount of property, then gave some of it to the school district, the Encinitas Community Church and the Community Social Center.
The Pacific View site is home to the original one-room schoolhouse built in 1883, as well as the elementary school built in 1953. The old schoolhouse was moved off the site for 55 years and then returned 25 years ago.
In 1964, a few small parcels around Pacific View were acquired by the school district, and a portion of that land was used for a playground. A search of those parcels revealed no restrictions, said Sarah Garfield, a community activist who obtained copies of those deeds through an architectural research historian.
Deed restrictions were the subject of debate in Del Mar last year as a school district battled in court to remove a deed restriction on the Del Mar Shores campus so the land could be sold.
The Del Mar Union School District's 1946 deed stipulated that the land, acquired for $10 from a wealthy family, could be used “for school purposes only,” which the school district contended was unenforceable.
The school district eventually agreed to sell the land to Del Mar. The city is allowing a private school to continue operating on part of the site. What will be done with the rest is undecided, though much of the push for city acquisition was to keep the ballfields as a park.
Tanya Mannes: (619) 498-6639; tanya.mannes@uniontrib.com
