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School may be built in Fountain Inn

Fountain Inn may become home to Greenville County’s first newly created high school since 1973.

A coordinated effort between city leaders and officials of Greenville County Schools has cleared the way for a new high school that may be located on Quillen Avenue in Fountain Inn a few blocks off Main Street, said Van Broad, economic development director for the city.

Fountain Inn’s Board of Zoning Appeals has approved a request to allow a school to be built on just more than 60 acres of property on Quillen Avenue and Jones Mill Road.

The new high school may open its doors by August 2017, according to Broad and Oby Lyles, school district spokesman.

Lyles told GreenvilleOnline.com that the school district has reached a “preliminary agreement” to purchase property from multiple property owners. School district administrators are in the midst of performing due diligence on the properties, and the school board would have to approve the location of the new school, he said.

He declined to identify the property or say when the measure may come before the board for a vote, but he said trustees included the new school in its 2010 long-range plan and tentatively named it New South County High School.

Fountain Inn, the only municipality in Greenville County that doesn’t have its own high school, would score a coup and the potential traffic and new development it could spark, Broad said.

“We have worked to get them as close to downtown Fountain Inn as possible,” Broad said. “A school would be a significant economic advantage for our revitalization efforts as well.”

The school would pull students from Hillcrest, Woodmont and Mauldin high schools, according to the district’s long-term development plan.

It would heighten Fountain Inn’s identity and bring more community support with a school that could potentially carry the city’s name, said attorney and former school board member Melvin Younts, a Fountain Inn resident who has led the city’s effort for five years to land the proposed high school.

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It would also allow local students to remain close to home, Younts said.

“It’s just very, very vital to a continuing growing area, which the Golden Strip is,” he said.

The new high school would be the district’s first new high school – not counting rebuilt, expanded or relocated schools – since Riverside High School opened in 1973, according to school websites and compiled histories.

Fountain Inn last had a high school in 1957 when the district shut the doors at what now is the Fountain Inn Civic Center for Performing Arts at 300 N. Main St.

Fountain Inn students have since gone to Hillcrest and Woodmont high schools.

Recent population estimates show a boom toward the southern part of the county.

A 2008 Greenville Pickens Area Transportation Study that projects population growth for 16 county planning areas says the Fountain Inn area’s population may more than double by 2030, from 9,100 to 20,700, the highest percentage increase in the county.

Simpsonville was projected to have the second-highest population increase from 26,200 to 49,600.

Broad said that when Fountain Inn learned that the school district planned to put a new high school in the southern part of the county that city leaders pulled together to make sure it would locate in or near Fountain Inn.

Broad said he has shown multiple potential sites to district officials.

The city’s board of zoning appeals had to make an exception to the city’s zoning laws to allow a school to locate on property zoned as residential or farmland, Broad said.

The potential site, split into multiple lots, includes a large open field across from the Quillen Manor assisted living facility. Broad said nearly 62 acres are included in the proposed sale and a few more may be acquired.

“People want to be in an area that’s growing and a new school denotes that an area has grown,” Broad said. “And of course Fountain Inn is beginning to see some significant growth with the industrial companies that are moving to our area.”

He added, “For Fountain Inn to have its own high school again puts us right back into the place where our other communities are to have community pride, community spirit, and that draws us together as a community. To me that’s what a high school will do for us.”

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