SLO County school district could build 150 homes at site of historic school
It’s been nearly two decades since the voices of students and teachers echoed off the wooden floors of Morro Elementary School.
The Morro Bay campus closed in 2001, when budget constraints and declining enrollment caused San Luis Coastal Unified School District to consolidate the school with a newer campus. Now, the district sees a new opportunity for the nine-acre Morro Elementary School site: affordable housing.
The district has drafted a plan to build and rent out about 150 manufactured homes on the property. The proposal is highly attractive to the city of Morro Bay, which city leaders say has struggled in recent years to find space and opportunities for new, relatively inexpensive housing.
Income from renting out the manufactured homes would recoup some of the roughly $8 million per year in property tax revenue lost when Diablo Canyon Power Plant closes in 2025.
The proposed plan is still months away from being finalized, but it has already caught the attention of locals, who fear the district’s plan will bulldoze part of Morro Bay history.
“Every school is the heart of their community and Morro Elementary was the heart of Morro Bay,” said Guy Crabb, a former Morro Elementary School teacher who is calling on the district to preserve the old buildings on the school’s campus.
San Luis Coastal Superintendent Eric Prater said he understands the sentimental and historical value of the school.
“I respect and honor that memory,” he said. “At the same time, I know what the better and higher use, and the greater benefit, to our communities would be.”
History of Morro Elementary School site
Maintaining the history of the Morro Elementary School property is paramount to a successful redevelopment plan, Prater said.
In 1918, Margaret J. Dickinson of Berkeley sold a small parcel of the property to the future San Luis Coastal Unified School District for $10, the equivalent of about $172 today. The district at the time was called the Morro School District.
Then, in 1936, Refugia Herrera sold 5.7 acres to what was known then as the Morro Union Elementary School District for $2,000. Shortly after that sale, the main Morro Elementary School building was built.
Over the next few decades, the school district bought more surrounding property and continued to add school buildings on the property. In 1954, two additional classroom wings were built with V-shaped roofs to allow more sunlight to enter, supposedly saving the district money on electricity to heat the building.
In 1986, the city of Morro Bay bought a small portion of the Morro Elementary School property from the school district — which by then had merged with San Luis Obispo City Schools, becoming San Luis Coastal Unified School District — to build the Morro Bay Community Center, which is still in operation today.
San Luis Coastal Unified School District saw declining enrollment in the late 1990s as a sign that two elementary school properties in Morro Bay were too much for the city. So the district consolidated the two schools into Del Mar Elementary School, a newer-built campus just 2.5 miles north of Morro Elementary School.
After 2001, the Morro Elementary School campus was rented out and repurposed as a church, a small charter school and a gym, among other uses.
Today, the property stretches 9.5 acres from Kennedy Way to Monterey Avenue and Surf Street.
What does San Luis Coastal district plan to do with property?
PG&E announced in 2016 that it would not renew the permits on its two nuclear reactors at its Diablo Canyon Power Plant, dealing a harsh financial blow to San Luis Coastal Unified School District in particular.
After relying on the power plant’s property taxes since the plant opened in the mid 1980s, the district could face a massive budget deficit.
In 2017, San Luis Coastal put together a task force called the Blue Ribbon Committee — made up of community members, education and business professionals, and school district parents. That committee’s directive was to come up with several ways the district could make enough money to sustain it in a Diablo Canyon-free era.
The committee’s final report, published in December 2017, listed recommendations from creating a permanent endowment — the San Luis Coastal Education Foundation, which the district implemented with $2 million in settlement funds from PG&E in 2019 — to increasing class sizes, implementing a parcel tax on residents in its jurisdiction and selling or renting surplus property.
Right now, the district is considering that last option — with its eyes set on the Morro Elementary campus.
The school district contracted the local Regional Economic Action Coalition (REACH) and Deloitte, a consulting company based in the United Kingdom that has 13 offices in California, to draft a plan for redeveloping the Morro Elementary property. RRM Design Group in San Luis Obispo then created a conceptual site plan showing what the property may look like with the manufactured homes.
The conceptual plan shows up to 151 residential units — manufactured homes ranging from 500 square feet to 1,500 square feet in size — neatly lined up on the school campus’s former sports field, parking lots and around two of the original school buildings.
The units would be rented out to school district employees and Morro Bay residents for roughly $700 to $900 per month, according to the concept plan presented to the school district’s board of trustees on Sept. 10.
“K-12 school districts could play a role in assisting our community, our region in this transition” away from reliance on Diablo Canyon Power Plant property taxes, Prater said. “We could meet the need of workforce housing in a nice, safe, really beautiful property, and also generate ongoing revenue for the district.”
Planning officials from the city of Morro Bay say they’re on board, citing the need for housing that is affordable to local residents.
“We are truly hopeful and optimistic that (the school district) could deliver truly affordable housing, which may allow us to retain teachers and police officers and firefighters in our community,” said Scott Collins, Morro Bay’s city manager.
Will school site buildings be preserved?
The Historical Society of Morro Bay is asking the district to preserve the old school buildings on campus for a better future use, said the society’s president, Glenn Silloway.
“We do need affordable housing,” Silloway said. “But we also need to ensure we are preserving the history of Morro Bay.”
The San Luis Coastal school district’s current conceptual site plan shows two existing buildings being preserved: part of a large school building with a bell tower, and another building that currently houses a small charter school.
Prater said it’s simply too expensive to maintain all the school buildings on the campus.
“We estimate anywhere from $5 (million) to $10 million that we’d have to put into that property to keep it up to code and keep it safe,” Prater said. “So we’re looking at that kind of commitment if we choose not to go down this road of redeveloping it.”
Tenants unsure of future on Morro Bay property
Current tenants of buildings on the Morro Elementary School property said they’re worried about what the future may hold if the San Luis Coastal school district redevelops the site.
Lindsey Ashton, owner of Revamp Training Studio, rents about 4,000 square feet in a classroom building from the district. She’s operated her gym there for more than nine years, she said, making modifications to the space to accommodate CrossFit and personal training.
Ashton said she found out about the possible demolition of the building from a client of her gym.
Moving out, she said, would put the future of her business up in the air.
“It’s definitely a bummer,” Ashton said. “We really don’t know what’s going to happen.”
The main school building with the bell tower is occupied by Shoreline Calvary Chapel, a Christian church that has rented out the building for 17 years, according to lead pastor Ed Compean.
Compean said that the church has worked over the years to maintain the structure.
“We have stewardship of this beautiful building, and we kind of enjoy taking care of it, trying to watch out for it,” he said.
Though moving out would be unfortunate, Compean said, the church would “look forward to a new season” in a new building.
Family Partnership Charter School operates its 75-student Montessori school out of the small building south of the main Morro Bay Elementary School building.
Jennifer Foronjy is the president of the Montessori Parent Network, the parent organization for the Morro Bay charter school. She said that she hopes the school can stay in the building.
“We’ve turned it into our home,” she said. “We could pick up, we could move, but we’ve put so much time and effort into it — it would be like creating a new home.”
What’s next for Morro Elementary School site?
According to Prater, plans to build manufactured homes at the Morro Elementary School site are not set in stone.
He acknowledged that San Luis Coastal is currently focusing on plans to reopen schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prater said the district has other ideas for gleaning revenue opportunities from the Morro Bay campus. It could sell the whole property, or trade the property for another, more desirable site.
The buildings that house Shoreline Cavalry Chapel and Family Partnership Charter School are mostly preserved in the district’s conceptual plan. But that could change, Prater said, as the plan continues to develop.
Collins, the Morro Bay city manager, said he wants the school district to build more than 151 housing units on the property — which the district said would likely make the project unaffordable.
Prater said community members can expect more details on the plan to be released over the next year or so.
“This is still super preliminary, even though we’re putting details into it,” he said. “It’s still way, way up in the air as to what we’re actually going to do.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
