By Ian S. Port
Assistant Editor
Under the agreement, the city paid the district $5 million of the original $8.5 million purchase price — the amount raised since July by fundraisers for the Winston School and a citizen group called the Campaign for Del Mar Shores. (Escrow on the initial payment had not closed by press time, but was expected imminently by both city and district officials.)
The remaining $3.5 million will be paid to the district over the course of one year at an interest rate of 5 percent, with monthly payments of $500,000 commencing Nov. 15. The loan is secured by the 5.3-acre property itself, and there are no penalties for paying it off early.
Under the lease terms agreed upon, the district may remain in its offices on the site for $1 annual rent for two years. Rent for a third year will be $30,000.
A ground lease between the Winston School and the city is still being worked on. Under the terms of the original July agreement, the Winston School owns the buildings it occupies, but the city owns the land under them.
The agreement —which officials said still contains a few unresolved details — comes after weeks of negotiations between the city and the school district, which kicked off after it became clear that fundraisers would not be able to raise the full $8.5 million purchase price by the original Feb. 28 deadline.
Fundraisers had warned since the deal was inked in July that raising $8.5 million in seven months would be difficult. Some said it was the most ambitious privately financed project the city has ever taken on.
By February, when the escrow was slated to close, only $5 million had been deposited into the account.
The district extended the deadline to May 15, inciting fierce criticism from some Carmel Valley parents who said it was giving Del Mar residents a sweet deal and could have obtained a higher price for the property.
Officials from both organizations said they were relieved that the extremely complex negotiations on the property were essentially concluded and that an agreement had been reached.
“I am so excited to have this,” said Del Mar Councilmember Crystal Crawford said of the agreement. “[Negotiating] makes the fundraising part look easy.”
“The transaction was complex and involved and immense amount of hard work,” said DMUSD Board President Annette Easton in a statement. “There are still a number of details — which are minor in comparison to the big picture — that will need to be worked through. We have every confidence that those details will be satisfactorily resolved.”
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