The Morgan Hill Unified School District is slowly moving towards acquiring a healthy parcel of land donated nine years ago by a local family; a project that was revisited and discussed during a public hearing Tuesday at the MHUSD Board of Education meeting.
Located near the intersection of Peet Road and Mission Avenida about a mile east of the Cochrane exit off U.S. 101, the 12-acre plot appraised at $2.6 million was given to MHUSD in 2003 by the Borello family, whose roots in Morgan Hill trace back to the early 1900s.
The Borellos grew apricot and cherry orchards along Peet and Cochrane roads for a century until September 2004. At that time, the family to drew up plans for a luxury housing development called San Sebastian Estates, with construction slated to commence in 2013.
Talk of a new elementary school for MHUSD, which currently has 8,790 students enrolled in its eight elementary schools, has been tossed around.
As for the Borello plot, the district must continue wading through the process of legally acquiring the property before officials can do something useful with it. The latest development in the saga to acquire the land continued with Tuesday’s public hearing, which addressed the impact study recently conducted by MHUSD in November.
Some of the community’s initial concerns stemmed from the proposed uses of the site, such as an elementary school or recreational facility. Other inquiries focused on the location of the property in relation to its two-mile distance from the Anderson Dam, which poses a flooding risk until the damn’s scheduled retrofitting in 2015. Traffic worries and potential environmental impacts to surrounding areas of the Peet Road property were also expressed.
Most recently, the district was required to hold a public response period for the study, in which members of the community and businesses had the opportunity to review and respond to the information. There were no outspoken opponents at Tuesday’s hearing, however.
Following the hearing, the board voted unanimously to adopt the declaration.
Next up, the district will formulate an agreement with the Borello family to finalize the donation.
Any decisions on what to do with the property are in limbo, Superintendent Smith reiterated. Regardless, MHUSD must accept the title of the property now in order to develop it later, as stipulated by the California Department of Education.
Smith says the district will likely use the property but does not have an immediate need for the space. When that time does come, the expansion will follow recent efforts to improve the academic vitality and infrastructure of the district.
As the district continues with its plans to acquire the Borello plot for future use, dreams for the site are still “so far out there,” Smith previously noted.
“We’re doing our due diligence to make sure it’s useable for the district,” he said.
