Fort Mill is getting a new kind of chapel, for believers who are already here
Fort Mill is the fastest-growing town in the Charlotte region, and one of the fastest growing in the country. Yet Latter-day Saints who live there have to travel to Rock Hill or Charlotte to worship — for now.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints owns a 5-acre property near Pleasant Road in Fort Mill where a new meetinghouse, or chapel, is planned. It would bring members together from several areas.
“Right now there are three congregations in the Fort Mill area,” said Kate Chaney, part of a Tega Cay community within the church that travels to Rock Hill for worship. “But we all travel.”
Branches are the smallest congregations in the church, followed by wards. A ward can have several hundred members. Then there’s a stake, or a group of several congregations similar to a Catholic diocese. Regions and areas are larger groups, often served by one or multiple temples.
The Rock Hill region has 11 branches and wards. All of them are part of the Fort Mill Stake. Yet there are only three meeting spaces in York County, and none are in Fort Mill.
The Fort Mill and Catawba wards meet at a Reservation Road site in Rock Hill. The Rock Hill and Tega Cay wards, along with the Saluda branch, meet on Saluda Road in Rock Hill. The Lake Wylie, York and Newport wards meet in York, while the Indian Land ward meets in Charlotte.
Lancaster and Chester branches meet in their respective cities.
Congregations have been meeting at different times to share space, something a new site in Fort Mill will alleviate. “Everybody will be glad to have more space,” Chaney said.
Fort Mill site goes from grocery store to meetinghouse
Fort Mill has dozens of Protestant, Catholic and nondenominational churches, a synagogue and an Islamic center if one includes the Islamic Community Center of South Charlotte. It’s in Indian Land but has a Fort Mill address. A Latter-day Saints chapel is new.
And it’s happening near Pleasant Road largely because a grocery store never did.
A decade ago, York County rezoned property to allow a grocery store shopping center at Pleasant, Coltharp and RPC roads. Lidl bought the 1760 Pleasant Road property in 2017 for $450,000. The grocer intended to build a 36,000-square-foot store there.
That project never happened, and last fall the Utah-based church bought the property for $3.2 million.
This week, the York County Planning Commission voted unanimously to clear conditions that were put on the property when it was intended for a shopping center. They included requirements like a $100,000 contribution from the property owner for traffic improvements in order to develop the property.
That decision still needs York County Council approval.
Some requirements, like pedestrian improvements, will still happen since they’ve been added to county code in the past decade. The changes this week apply to the church property, along with a more than 2-acre vacant commercial site adjacent to it.
No development plans were submitted for that smaller parcel as part of the recent county decision.
More about the Fort Mill meetinghouse
Plans submitted to York County ahead of this week’s land use decision show a roughly 17,000-square-foot chapel at the center of the Pleasant Road property. There’s one entrance into the site off Pleasant Road, and a shared driveway that serves the adjacent vacant commercial site and a Home2 Suites by Hilton hotel.
The building would have seating for 580 people. Parking would go on three sides, all except for the Pleasant Road one. A sketch plan also shows a picnic pavilion on road to the neighboring sites, toward the Coltharp Road side.
The zoning changes reviewed by the Planning Commission this week are tentatively scheduled to go to York County Council for initial review and a public hearing July 20. Council could finalize the decision Sept. 8.