The Albany School District has started negotiating to buy property north of Knox Butte Road in hopes of building two new schools there.

The district wants to use the proceeds from selling property it owns on Lochner Road to buy 30 acres of what is known as the Brandis annexation.

The 446-acre tract, named for one of its principal property owners, is located between Clover Ridge Road and Goldfish Farm Road, north of Santiam Highway. Voters approved its annexation in November 2002.

According to the annexation agreement, the developers must offer a site of approximately 30 acres for a school or schools. The school district has a five-year option to buy or trade for the site from the date streets are in place at the edge of the site. The purchase option must be offered "at no more than its fair market value."

Neither the sale figure for the Lochner property nor the purchase price for the Brandis property is being made public at this time, Superintendent Pat Bedore said. Neither side has made a formal offer.

On Monday, Albany School Board members voted to declare the 30 acres east of Lochner Road as surplus.

The property was declared surplus before, in 2002 when Cleco, a Louisiana power company, expressed interest in building a power plant there, but that deal fell through after neighbors complained. Board members agreed to make the declaration again to clarify that a new buyer is interested, Bedore said

The potential buyer has not been identified but is not affiliated with Cleco.

"We're hoping to make enough money on selling that (land) that would equal the amount of money for where we're wanting the schools," Bedore said.

The Lochner property is zoned for light industry and would have to be annexed. The Brandis property is mostly residential, with pockets for light commercial areas.

The area the district wants to buy does not currently have utilities or road access. Those items are part of the current negotiations, Bedore said.

Bedore said the district likely would have to issue a bond levy to build new schools, but those plans have not begun.

For now, she said, the issue is that some 1,200 new homes could be built in the Knox Butte area in the next 15 years, and district officials don't believe the current schools can handle the growth.

Wayne Goates, director of student services, anticipates capacity problems at West Albany High School this coming fall, at all three middle schools by fall 2009, and at Clover Ridge Elementary School - nearest the Brandis development - by 2012. Clover Ridge also has a limited drainage field capacity for its septic tank.

The Lochner site is under BPA power lines, contains wetlands and is not experiencing the same kind of growth as the northeast part of town, so it is "not considered now to be an ideal site for a school site," said Russell Allen, the district's business director.

The idea would be to build an elementary school and a middle school next to each other on the 30 acres, similar to the way Memorial Middle and West Albany High schools share a site.

"We still have a lot of analysis to do," Bedore said.