Crumbling old boys school in Paso Robles could be transformed soon. What’s coming?
Big changes are coming to the old boys school in Paso Robles after its owners announced plans to raze the dilapidated site and develop it into a new 135-acre community hub — a project slated to be presented to the City Council this summer.
Los-Angeles-based Majestic Realty purchased the property from the state of California in 2021 and has spent the past four years developing a master plan for the old school — one that involves hotels, retail, market space, warehouses and more.
Majestic Realty senior vice president Taylor Talt told The Tribune that the development company has worked with numerous stakeholders on the project, including the city itself, the Paso Robles Wine Alliance and the Chamber of Commerce, among others, to understand what exactly the community needed with this future development.
“We knew we weren’t going to develop a dense project with a lot of square footage of stuff, which is ... not what the region wants,” he said. “So we backed off of density, and we did more of a ‘destination development,’ so everything will work together and flow together, whether it’s the hospitality, into the retail, into the restaurant, into the nature space, into the office component, and the line production distribution.”
Plans like this have been a long time coming for the school — formerly known as the El Paso de Robles Correctional Facility or the Estrella Correctional Facility — on Airport Road.
Opened in 1947, the school was once home to hundreds of teens who received “therapeutic counseling” and vocational training.
After closing for good in 2008, the property has sat vacant and deteriorating for nearly 20 years. With its rusty fences and barbed-wire, cobwebbed windows and overgrown greenery, the large parcel feels like an eerie ghost town.
The property is home to 42 buildings — 12 dormitories, a medical building, two gymnasiums, a pool, an office building, a machine and maintenance building, a kitchen, seven classroom buildings and a chapel/auditorium — and cost the state about $700,000 a year to maintain the empty site before it sold to Majestic Realty.
Talt said all the current buildings will be demolished, but a majority of the material will be recycled and reused for The Landing.
“Whether it be the base on our roads or building pads, we’re recycling and reusing on site, which is great,” he said. “We won’t haul a lot of stuff off. It’ll just depend what the market demands at the time on which product type to go first, whether we take the entire thing down at once, or if we take it down in stages, depending on kind of what we’re developing.”
According to Majestic Realty’s renderings, The Landing will consist of about 1 million square feet of buildings and is estimated to cost about $800 million.
“We want to build something that is going to be what the region wants, what the region needs,” Talt said. “We’re a long-term company. We’re a company that comes into communities, and we make the investment, and we hold it and we stay there. We don’t walk away.”
Majestic Realty also hopes to contribute to Paso Robles economic growth, anticipating that The Landing’s development will create nearly 3,000 permanent jobs, generate around $35 million in annual tax revenue combined for the city, county and state and contribute $11.8 million to the annual city general fund after operations stabilize, according to data shared with The Tribune.
Paso Robles Economic Development Manager Paul Sloan told The Tribune that the city is excited to finally develop the deteriorating boys school.
“Having something take over that property, especially something like that, it’s great, you know, the jobs that it will bring. It’s a very, very exciting opportunity,” he said.
From an economic standpoint, Sloan said he believed that The Landing, in tandem, could help the neighboring, growing airport that’s currently in the process of applying for a license to be a spaceport.
“The Majestic Group reached out to us specifically to learn about the spaceport project because they see it as very complementary, the two, because as we begin to attract businesses, they will need places to attract business to," he said. “They’re going to have a significant amount of office space, as well as maker space, and other things, so having them build up facilities that businesses can come to will be a huge, huge advantage for Paso.”
Sloan said the city is due to review The Landing’s renderings this summer.
If the project is approved, Majestic Realty would receive the go-ahead to start infrastructure upgrades and construction.
