STEELE CREEK NEWS
Contract Awarded
for New School and Park on York Road
(December 19,
2012) Last week, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board approved a
$12,936,000 contract for a new elementary school and neighborhood
park on part of a 110-acre parcel on York Road across from the
entrance to McDowell Nature Preserve. (See
Wikimapia locator.)
The contract was
awarded to the lowest responsive bidder, Clancy & Theys Construction
Company. The contract will include site work, parking, road paving,
building construction, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, cabling for
voice, video, data and all other systems related to the construction
of a new 39-classroom elementary school. The school is scheduled for
occupancy in August 2014.
Funding for the
school was included in the 2007 school bond package. At that time,
the school was expected to be open in 2010, but the county has
delayed selling bonds due to the economy.
The contract also
includes the construction of a 20-acre neighborhood park behind the
school. The master plan for the site was released by the Mecklenburg
County Park and Recreation Department in 2008.
Click on the image
below, or
HERE, the view a pdf version of the park and school
layouts.
The elementary school will be in the northwest corner of the site
along York Road. The park will be on 20 acres behind the school,
along the west side of the site. The original site plan features two
age-specific playgrounds, a park pavilion, and a play field. All of
these will be adjacent to the school and can be used by the school
during school hours. The park will be open to the public but a
separate play area will be restricted to school use during school
hours.
The
plan also included a short, .75 mile asphalt loop trail to the south
of the elementary school and a longer 1-mile asphalt loop trail
around the high school that is planned for the remaining portion of
the site. However, the asphalt trails will not be built under this
contract.
The high school will take up the bulk of the property on the east
side. No funding has been authorized and there is no schedule for
its construction. When the high school is
built, a road will be built through the property connecting to a new
subdivision planned to the south. The asphalt trail in the
neighborhood park and the larger loop trail around the high school
should be built when the high school is built. The larger loop trail will have two
pedestrian connections to the future neighborhood.
The
cost of the neighborhood park is $311,518, which will be funded
through 2008 park bonds. The Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation
Department will reimburse Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools for the cost
of the park.
The
new school is described as relief for Winget Park and Lake Wylie
Elementary Schools, but according to maps adopted by the School
Board in 2008 and available
HERE, the attendance area for new school (temporarily
named "new York Rd/red Fez Club Rd" school in 2007) will come out of
the Winget Park boundary. This year, student enrollment is about 950
at Winget Park and about 630 at Lake Wylie. The building classroom
capacity for Winget Park and the new school is 767 each. The
building classroom capacity for Lake Wylie is 693.
Once a principal is
named in the spring of 2014, the public will be invited to
participate in the process to name the new elementary school.
The neighborhood park
is named Palisades Neighborhood Park. However, interested persons
can submit an application for a different name. If they build a good
case, the Park and Recreation Department will consider renaming the
park.
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