Why was Midlands school never built on $1.9M site? It still sits unused after purchase
A decade ago, the Lexington 2 school district bought 38 acres north of Sunset Boulevard on the outskirts of West Columbia. The district spent $1.9 million on the property with plans to put a new elementary school there. But 10 years later, the land still sits undeveloped, with the new school built elsewhere.
One reason the planned school site ultimately was not used was the expected additional traffic in the area.
A 2016 traffic study by the S.C. Department of Transportation noted the lack of traffic signals at multiple intersections near the proposed site. The district-owned property fronts on Henbet Drive, roughly a block north of busy Sunset Boulevard, where there is no stop light.
The traffic study projected that traffic on Henbet would back up for more than eight minutes during school pick up and drop off times without a traffic signal being installed at the intersection with Sunset. Even after school let out for the day, DOT estimates that turns from Henbet would be delayed by almost five minutes, compared to the expected growth in traffic in the area without a new school.
The study estimates a student body of 950 students, producing an estimated 1,230 daily two-way trips to the school.
“The unsignalized intersections of US 378 at Henbet Drive and Trotter Court both operate poorly during one or more of the peak hours studied,” the study says. “The reasoning for these poor service levels are the extremely high volume of through traffic on US 378 during the peak hours.
“Since this intersection is basically the main access to the proposed school, impact by school traffic to this intersection is the cause of these poor operating conditions,” it says.
Not far away, Sunset’s intersection with Trotter Road would also experience a delay of up to a minute or more at peak times if a school were built on the site, which DOT assesses as an “F” in terms of level of service. But the report notes this wouldn’t be a large increase from current delay times, since Trotter also doesn’t have a traffic light.
The stretch of road is home to commercial space mainly housing medical offices. But Henbet is also near the Langley Pointe Apartments development, and the school district site would sit at the end of Ephrata Drive emptying out of the Quail Hollow subdivision.
The study recommends widening Henbet Drive to allow for turn lanes onto Sunset. It would also formalize right and left turn lanes in the current center lane on Sunset, plus the addition of a traffic signal.
This stretch of Sunset Boulevard was scheduled to receive intersection improvements and a traffic signal in Lexington County’s 2022 penny sales tax plan, with an estimated price tag of $1.9 million. The penny sales tax was defeated in a countywide referendum that year.
The planned Riverbank Elementary School was later opened in 2018 on Cougar Drive adjacent to Northside Middle School, about three miles down Sunset Boulevard.
In response to questions from The State, Lexington 2 officials stressed the traffic study was for the planned Riverbank Elementary School on Henbet. “We expect continued growth in our district area and will be looking at all options for school/education needs as we consider plans for this site,” the district said.
The Henbet property isn’t the only unused property owned by Lexington 2. The district in 2020 paid $4.7 million for a 28-acre site on 12th Street Extension and Saxe Gotha Road, which was set to host a performing arts center that later opened on Platt Springs Road. The district also owns eight acres on Ann Lane where Taylor Elementary School once stood. Those properties are also being held for future school district use, Lexington 2 said.
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