By Jennifer Wadsworth @jennwadsworth / April 21, 2014

Agnews, a former asylum, may one day become a public high school.

The city is making headway on a development that will flip the site of a defunct mental institution into a mix of public schools, trails and sports facilities.

San Jose and the Santa Clara Unified School District are going in on an $80 million deal to buy the 81-acre site of the shuttered Agnews Developmental Center from the state. The City Council votes on Tuesday to authorize the purchase and the school district on Thursday—in time for the sale to be settled by the end of this month and escrow to close by the end of June.

Agnews lies in North San Jose, a part of the city that’s technically within the borders of Santa Clara Unified, which needs to add schools to accommodate a burgeoning student population.

San Jose plans to spend $12 million for a quarter of the land along Zanker Road and North First Street then drop $7 million to raze old buildings and ready the site near Cisco and eBay for regional park use. After demolition, cleanup is estimated to cost $27 million.

Fully built, the site will include soccer fields, trails and a cricket pitch.

The school district tried for years to buy the Agnews site from the state’s Department of General Services. The mental health facility closed in 2009 after 120 years as an inpatient mental health clinic. But a state law prevents the state from offering below-market-rate prices to schools, so the district had to team up with the city to write up a joint offer.