After securing the support of the Mountain View City Council last month, the Los Altos School District has been quietly laying the groundwork to shift nearly 600,000 square feet of development in the San Antonio area in order to build a new school within the city limits.

Using a complex process that still needs final approval from the council, school district officials detailed Monday night how they plan to buy expensive land for a school in the San Antonio area and "sell" the development rights for any unused square footage to offset the costs. Developers who buy these so-called development rights could build offices or homes elsewhere in the city that are denser or taller than what would normally be allowed

The school district is expected to release the names of the developers who are interested in buying the rights early next month, as well as identify the properties in San Antonio the district plans to pursue purchasing. Depending on the price of the land, which can range from $10 million to $15 million per acre, the school district could potentially offset the entire cost of land by using the transfer of development rights (TDRs), making it financially feasible to construct a school campus north of El Camino Real.

The Los Altos School District's boundaries encompass a swath of Mountain View and close to one-third of its students are Mountain View residents.

At the Nov. 13 board meeting, Assistant Superintendent Randy Kenyon said the district is seeking between 6 and 10 acres of land within the San Antonio Precise Plan area, which includes the shopping center and adjacent properties along Showers Drive, California Street and San Antonio Road. If the district manages to buy eight acres and build a 75,000-square-foot school, Kenyon said, that still leaves 570,000 in unused square footage that could be sold to Mountain View developers like Google to the tune of $130 per square foot -- adding up to a grand total of $74 million. Areas where the development rights could be used could include North Bayshore, East Whisman and El Camino Real.

The cash windfall would make it possible to buy land in an area where real estate is going for a premium and where rapid development is taking place -- both complicating factors forcing the school district to act fast and cut costs using roundabout strategies like selling developer rights. The district has its own source of cash for a new school, a $150 million bond that voters approved in 2014, but it would be entirely exhausted by the land purchase and the construction costs.

At the Oct. 3 City Council meeting, Los Altos school board member Bryan Johnson said the district needs the "maximum flexibility" possible, including the ability to convert residential square footage to office space, in order to woo Mountain View developers and shore up as much money as possible to offset the cost of land.

Council members generally agreed, though they did not take a formal vote, to allow Los Altos School District to use the transfer of development rights to build a school in the area with few strings attached, and signaled they were willing to commit up to $23 million in funding to help finance shared-use park space in the area.

San Antonio has the lowest park acreage per resident in the entire city, at 1.34 acres per 1,000 people.

San Antonio developers cry foul

Although Mountain View City Council members roundly supported transferring density out of the San Antonio area, two major developers in the region were less than thrilled with the idea, and have demanded that the city go through a formal precise plan amendment before allowing it.

Barton Hechtman, a lawyer representing Greystar, told council members on Oct. 3 that the city has an obligation to study the impacts of density transfers on the San Antonio area, particularly in light of the housing crisis. Greystar currently has a proposal under review by the city to replace the Old Mill office site and former Safeway site, and Hecthman said the property owners have no interest in selling the land to the school district.

Hecthman also warned that eminent domain law does not permit the school district to acquire land with the intent to sell the property rights, and that the developer and property owners would legally challenge such a taking of the property. Even if the school district ultimately wins the day in court, it would take years and be costly, he said.

"We believe that other possible acquisition sites could be obtained in a much shorter time frame with more certainty and less risk," he said.

Merlone Geier, which has redeveloped a major section of the San Antonio Shopping Center in recent years, sent a letter to the city earlier this month claiming that it would be harmed if development under the San Antonio Precise Plan could suddenly be pulled out of the region and injected elsewhere in the city. Keeping density within San Antonio is an important part of revitalizing the area, the letter states, and it would harm the company's huge investment if the city strays from the precise plan's zoning.

The letter goes on to say that Merlone Geier would be interested in buying up density rights from the school district if TDRs were allowed only within the confines of the San Antonio Precise Plan, provided that the company is granted the latitude to build up to seven stories, pick the commercial-to-residential density ratios and essentially "bank" the development rights "to sell to other ... landowners in the future."

The only trouble is that the only remaining place for Merlone Geier to add density is on the corner of California Street and San Antonio Road, which the letter says is "complicated" by parcels owned by Dave Pilling and Steve Rasmussen, the owner of the Milk Pail market.

"It remains to be seen if we can complete the land assemblage, despite further efforts of late to provide a relocation alternative to the Milk Pail," Merlone Geier representatives wrote.

Slow to start

The Los Altos School District successfully passed its $150 million bond measure more than three years ago, but still doesn't have much to show for it. A rigorous master plan showing upgrades at existing school sites has yet to be developed, and there isn't a detailed design drawn up for what the new campus will look like either. The school board has yet to officially say whether the new school would be a district-operated elementary school or the new campus for Bullis Charter School -- something Mountain View City Council members said the district should decide on its own.

District staff and board members say there's been a rigorous and exhaustive search for a suitable school site going on, and that all of the major decisions about the size of the school, the permanent facility plans for Bullis and the design can only fall in place once the location has been selected.

Even finalizing the agreements to transfer development rights has been delayed. The school district was expecting to have the letters of intent -- agreements essentially saying a developer wants to buy increased density from the school district -- ready to go by the Nov. 13 board meeting along with an agreement with the city of Mountain View to formally allow the transfer of development rights. That date has since been pushed back to the Dec. 11.

"Because of the complexities involved in partnering with several different developers ... it is taking longer to get firm commitments than originally assumed," Kenyon told board members.

During the search, there has also been lengthy debate over the last three years on whether land acquisition is really the best course of action. Some district residents, as well as representatives from Bullis Charter School, banded together to form a group called Creative Facilities Solutions, which argues that the bond money could be better spent converting one of its larger school sites, like Covington Elementary or Egan Junior High School, into a two-school campus with staggered start times to avoid major traffic snarls.

Kenyon said that reconfiguring an existing school and constructing new facilities on the same site may not be the money-saver people think it is. He told board members that it could cost an estimated $77.7 million to build a two-school site at Covington and $78.6 million for a two-school site at Egan or Blach Intermediate schools.

Superintendent Jeff Baier told the Voice that district residents still mostly favor the school district's strategy to buy land in order to accommodate growing enrollment. He said the district's Enrollment Growth Task Force, Facilities Advisory Committee and Facilities Master Plan Committee all agreed that the district needs to expand its footprint and acquire one -- or even two -- new school sites. Future enrollment growth is largely expected to occur north of El Camino Real in the San Antonio area, making it all the more desirable to have a school in the area.