The Morro Bay City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to approve a purchase and sale agreement to potentially buy the former Morro Elementary School property.
City officials said the vote does not commit the city to completing the purchase. Instead, it allows Morro Bay to begin several months of inspections and other due diligence work to evaluate the more than $5 million property.
“Some of those items include title easements and boundary review, ensuring that the property is what we say it is or we think it is, and doing an environmental screening,” said City Manager John Craig at the Tuesday night meeting.
The move to buy the property comes after San Luis Coastal Unified School District announced plans to sell the long-closed Morro Elementary and Sunnyside campuses, citing millions of dollars in modernization costs. Soon after that announcement, Morro Bay community members became concerned that private developers could purchase the property and build high-density housing on the nearly 10-acre site.
A grassroots organization called Friends of Morro Elementary was then formed and has been working to preserve the land with the city. The group has held fundraising events and worked with city officials during negotiations with the school district.
Mayor Carla Wixom said the site could potentially support a mix of uses.
“There’s a little bit of room for a little bit of everything there,” Wixom said. “If our civic center moves over there, if our city government moves over there, you have all that property there to envision what that housing potential could be.”
Under the agreement, the city would place a $500,000 deposit toward the purchase and conduct inspections, feasibility studies and other evaluations during a due-diligence period.
Council members emphasized that no decisions have been made about the site’s future use, which could include civic facilities, housing, open space or other community needs. City leaders also plan to hold public workshops in the coming months to gather community input about potential future uses for the property.
If Morro Bay ultimately decides to move forward after completing its review, the deal could close by late October.
