A release below from Mary Beth Hill- Lexington One Communications Director.

The Lexington County School District One Board of Trustees, Tuesday, accepted the administration’s recommendation to give final approval to purchase property for $1,594,575.00 ($47,500 per acre) for the purpose of relocating Lexington Middle School. The negotiated price is on the low end of the independent appraisals the district received.

The property is on Old Cherokee Road and consists of 23.57 acres (TMS # 004300-04-016 and 10 acres of property known as TMS # 004300-04-075.)
The careful decision to purchase this 33.57-acre property began in March when the district entered into an option agreement and was made after an extensive six-month long evaluation of all parcels of comparable size in the attendance area. This parcel best meets our need for a school site.

The district will use the prototype it used to build Beechwood Middle School, which opened this year on Highway #378, to build the new Lexington Middle School. It is currently using that same prototype to build Pelion Middle School. The use of a prototype saves time usually dedicated to the design process, allows contractors to begin work earlier reducing inflationary costs, and typically results in fewer change orders.

The relocation of Lexington Middle School ensures that students will be under one roof and not in multiple buildings — a safer campus, will provide adequate stacking for student drop-off and pick-up, and will increase the capacity of the facility to accommodate future growth.

The current LMS site is located in a heavily traveled area where the South Carolina Department of Transportation’s traffic counts show that 43,000 vehicles travel by it each day. The new site sees 10,000 vehicles a day — 33,000 fewer vehicles.

After a detailed traffic impact analysis, the district plans to make all necessary road improvements in the area to mitigate the anticipated impact on traffic caused by morning drop off and afternoon pick up as it develops the new site on Old Cherokee Road. Those improvements will improve traffic patterns in the area year round even though school does not take place during the summer months.