After year-plus wait, Legion Collegiate’s new site ready to open. Here’s when it will

Legion has been waiting on this for a long time.

Legion Collegiate Academy will welcome students into its new building on its permanent campus on Tuesday, principal TK Kennedy told The Herald on Thursday. This is an important development for Rock Hill’s newest public charter school, which resided on a temporary site off Bird Street in Rock Hill since it opened in the fall of 2019.

“I’m still like, ‘Is it really real?’” Kennedy said over the phone. “I won’t realize it until next week, when the kids are here.”

Legion, a school that’s made a splash in Rock Hill for its unabashed emphasis on athletics and its unconventional day-to-day schedule that reflects that emphasis, announced it had received its Certificate of Occupancy from the South Carolina Office of School Facilities on Wednesday afternoon. The approval dubs the school building safe for students and faculty to use.

Construction on the new site began Jan. 1, 2020.

Most of Legion’s facilities will be ready for use immediately, Kennedy said, with the exception of a portion of the student union and the gym. Those facilities will be touched up shortly after students arrive.

The building — which is on Legion’s 83-acre site at 3090 Long Meadow Road off S.C. Highway 901 — has 16 classrooms, coaching offices, a weight room, a student union, a gymnasium, locker rooms, a training room with a whirlpool and administrative offices.

All students will remain on a hybrid attendance schedule (part in-person instruction, part virtual instruction) for the time being, Kennedy said.

“This is the first part of it,” Kennedy said. Much of Legion’s vision is still in front of it, including the school’s expressed desire to develop the rest of its 83-acre site and build a football stadium and baseball and softball fields on its campus. “It’s no where near where I want it to be (one day). But it’s on a strong, very solid foundation.”

This story was originally published February 12, 2021 at 11:33 AM.

Alex Zietlow

The Herald

Alex Zietlow writes about sports and the ways in which they intersect with life in York, Chester and Lancaster counties for The Herald, where he has been an editor and reporter since August 2019. Zietlow has won nine S.C. Press Association awards in his career, including First Place finishes in Feature Writing, Sports Enterprise Writing and Education Beat Reporting. He also received two Top-10 awards in the 2021 APSE writing contest and was nominated for the 2022 U.S. Basketball Writers Association’s Rising Star award for his coverage of the Winthrop men’s basketball team.