COLUMBIA, S.C. — Neighbors within the Earlwood and Cottontown neighborhoods of Columbia are still pushing back on a proposed plan to build a charter school on the N. Main corridor.
Clear Dot Charter School proposed building a K-12 school, in the 2200 block of N. Main St. in Columbia. They expect 1,300 students to attend. The school would accommodate commuter students from all over the Midlands.
"You're talking potentially a thousand cars dropping off students at 8 o'clock in the morning and picking up students between three and four in the afternoon," says Will Thrift, president of the Cottontown Neighborhood Association. "That will be a huge snarl on not just traffic down here, but also on the economic development that we've seen."
The school would sit on five acres of property, a significantly smaller property than other high schools in Richland One School District.
"Cottontown wants to have school options, but we think this is a terrible place to put that size of a school in that scope of an operation, crammed into that one block area."
Business owners are also concerned by the potential development.
A Taste of the South owner, Elie Abikaled, says he appreciates development in the area, but thought that the property would be turned into something else.
"A mixed use development that would incorporate some cool apartments, a trendy hotel that would probably serve equally as well and probably serve equally as well and it would generate different type of traffic for the city," says Abikaled. "There are other great sites for such a school, so it's a balance."
Clear Dot Charter School has a temporary school in downtown Columbia, on Marion St. They did not respond to our requests for comment on this story.
However, the school has presented several traffic studies to the SC Department of Transportation. SCDOT is currently reviewing the most recent study, prepared by Kimley-Horn.
Rob Perry, Director of Traffic Engineering, sent a statement saying:
The school intends to have a capacity of 1,300 students so that will add traffic on the roads near and around the proposed site. However, as you know schools release in the afternoon before peak travel times which are typically from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM. To mitigate additional traffic, the engineer for the school has recommended some signal re-timings, a roundabout and some left turning movements to be eliminated. At this time SCDOT has not accepted the traffic impact analysis or proposed improvements as final.
The SC Department of Education's role is to oversee the approval of charter applications once they have gone through the review process by the charter sponsor and received approval.
The Clear Dot Charter School falls under the Charter Institute at Erskine.