Fort Mill will build a new, bigger elementary school. This is how much it’ll cost
The Fort Mill school board approved a construction contract Tuesday night to build its 12th elementary school. Builder Shelco will construct the new school for almost $56.3 million paid for through school impact fees on new home and apartment construction.
The new school will be on Gold Hill Road property where a future middle school also is planned. In January the York County planning commission voted to rezone 88 acres at 278 Gold Hill Road. The school district submitted plans for that decision showing elementary school No. 12 and middle school No. 7.
Last year the school district moved forward with design work for two elementary schools and a middle school — including the two planned schools at Gold Hill — despite not having funds through a bond referendum or other means. There still is no answer on how the middle school planned along Gold Hill Road will be funded.
That early design work anticipated a need for all three schools by 2025.
The district found it can use impact fees for the elementary school along Gold Hill Road.
Those fees are charged when permits are pulled for new residential construction.
To date the district has collected more than $61 million in impact fees. The district requested almost $3.5 million to date from York County, which establishes and collects the impact fees for the district, for elementary school No. 12.
There are other costs
The roughly $56 million approved in the construction contract isn’t the only cost for the school. The original project budget — planning, design and other costs in addition to construction — was almost $64.7 million. An extra $2.5 million was added due to grading from the middle school to elementary school portions of the site. That put the overall budget at almost $67.2 million.
The almost $10.2 million difference between the construction and full amounts includes costs like inspections, engineering, architectural work and furnishings. Still, the project will come in almost $740,000 below the revised total budget, said Joe Romenick, assistant superintendent of facilities and operations.
“No, this does not include any funding for some of the extra work we’re going to have to be doing at the intersection and road work,” Romenick said.
When developers submit plans to towns, cities or counties in the area for construction, it’s up to developers to mitigate immediate traffic concerns if the project generates them. In this case the new traffic generated by the schools site will mean targeted road upgrades in an already busy area between I-77 and U.S. 21 Bypass.
“That number can be anywhere between $5 (million) to $7 million,” Romenick said. “Our civil engineers are working on plans for that right now.”
The district won’t know a design on that road work until January.
Larger schools
Almost everything in construction now is more expensive than when prior elementary schools were built in Fort Mill. The most recent openings were Kings Town and River Trail elementary schools in the 2020-21 school year. Other schools date back decades. Yet there’s another cost increase with the new school.
“Besides inflation, you’ve got a 20% capacity increase,” said board member Wayne Bouldin.
Existing schools have a capacity of about 1,000 students. The new elementary school will have space for 1,200 students. That move is strategic as people continue to move to Fort Mill, driving up both the cost of land and the need for more schools to serve the population.
“Rather than building more frequently, the thought was, build a little bit bigger,” said board chairwoman Kristy Spears.
This story was originally published October 5, 2023 at 10:56 AM.
