Check out the latest plans for two new Fort Mill schools, and what comes next
Plans for two new Fort Mill schools are coming into focus.
The Fort Mill School District applied to rezone an 88-acre parcel at 278 Gold Hill Road. The York County planning commission voted unanimously on Monday night to recommend the zoning change. York County Council will have final say.
“This will allow the development of an elementary and a middle school campus,” said county planning manager Diane Dil.
After rezoning, the project still would have to come back with final plans for a special exception from the county zoning board of appeals. The property is mostly and thickly wooded, and has a floodplain with significant slope roughly covering the western half of the site.
“They’re utilizing the area that’s outside, every bit of it that’s outside, that floodplain,” Dil said.
The property just touches I-77, but its much larger frontage comes along Gold Hill between that road’s intersections with Springfield Parkway and U.S. 21 Bypass. That stretch of Gold Hill sees an average of 4,900 vehicle trips per day. Beyond it, there’s U.S. 21 Bypass with 18,000 trips and Springfield with 10,600 trips.
The property is beside the Beckett Farms apartments, near Ross Dress for Less property and a neighborhood off Forest Way Drive. There are two undeveloped parcels beside the Fort Mill site, each at more than 50 acres, owned by others.
A site plan submitted by the district refers to the Eubanks site as elementary school No. 12 and middle school No. 7. The Eubanks family, still one of the nearby owners, had the property prior to district ownership.
The site has three large entrance points along Gold Hill. The schools appear to share the central access, and a road behind the schools connects both.
The submitted drawing shows football and baseball fields, the former with a running track, behind the easternmost school nearer the floodplain line. The athletic fields are oriented away from Gold Hill, on the side nearer the interstate and developed industrial properties.
The school district began evaluating the potential school site in 2016. New school planning is a constant effort for the growing district that now has more than 18,000 students and is the largest district in York County.
Last spring the district decided to fund pre-design work for two elementary schools and a middle school, even ahead of any bond vote that would fund them. About half of a larger $4 million capital needs list last fall was money for future school land acquisition or early design work for the three schools, which district officials said would be needed by fall 2025.
The property is a mix of zoning, which now would allow for light industrial and apartment development. Because it’s so close to I-77, it’s part of a section where the county targets larger employment opportunities. Large industrial, distribution, warehouse and similar employment hubs often locate along the interstate.
“Even though it’s not a target industry,” Dil said, “schools do have a lot of employment. And so it does achieve that goal of being able to have an employee base.”
A Pennies for Progress project will reconfigure part of Gold Hill in that area through US 21 widening. Dil said a traffic impact analysis was submitted for the school district project. It doesn’t recommend significant road changes the district would have to fund. Further details will come in site planning, including the request for an exception.
This story was originally published January 10, 2023 at 12:32 PM.
