The William S. Hart Union High School District board has penned an agreement to purchase a high school site in the first phase of the future NorthLake community of Castaic…     Superintendent Bob Lee said Friday that the campus will be located on a hill overlooking Castaic Lake.
    “It will have a spectacular panoramic view of the lake” and of the west side of the Santa Clarita Valley, Lee said.
    The school site is immediately north of the existing NorthLake Hills community. NorthLake Hills was built by the same developer but is not actually part of the 4,000-home NorthLake community, which was approved several years ago but has yet to undergo construction.
    The Castaic campus will be the third new high school to open in the burgeoning district after Golden Valley High School, which opens this fall, and West Ranch High School, which is slated to open in the Valencia Westridge community in August 2005.
    The 40-page agreement between the Hart district and the developer anticipates a purchase price of $24 million for the ready-to-build school site with utilities up to the property line.
    Rory Livingston, the district’s assistant superintendent for facilities, said the exact price of the land will be determined by a real-estate appraiser after the grading and infrastructure is completed in about 18 months.
    With the agreement in hand, the district can now open escrow, apply for state school construction funding, and begin preparing an environmental impact report.
    Money for the school will come from a combination of state and voter-approved Measure V funds as well as developer fees, Livingston said.
    “We are moving to NorthLake as our No. 1 site,” he said.
    Water remains an issue, said Lee.
    “Once the water is secured, they’ll have their grading plan approved,” he said.
    But securing the water hookups could prove challenging for the NorthLake developer. NorthLake is in the Newhall County Water District, which has put the brakes on approvals for large development projects in the belief that the valley’s prevailing water availability figures are flawed.
    Lee said the water situation has delayed the project by 12 months.
    Livingston said the water approvals are “an issue that the district will have to work through.”