Horry County School Board cancels 30 acre land purchase for new Socastee school

Horry County Schools is once again on the lookout for land.

The Board of Education voted to cancel a 30-acre purchase Monday during their regular board meeting. The land, situated off S.C. 707 and Big Block Road in Socastee, was intended to hold a new middle school.

The district discovered drainage issues on the land which “deemed it not suitable for school construction,” said Teal Harding, spokeswoman for the district. The district took advantage of an option written into the contract to cancel the purchase, she said.

Joe DeFeo, board chairman, said excessive rain over the last four months gathered on the property since the previous owners did not install ditches, which left only eight or nine acres of useable land.

“It could clear up in the future but we couldn’t afford to wait,” DeFeo said. “It’s possible we could have fixed it but we did not want to buy a property on only the thought that we could fix it.”

Money is still available to purchase new land and the district was refunded their deposit for the site, according to John Gardner, chief financial officer.

The purchase would have been the final property needed for the district’s $45.16 million building project which includes five new schools located in Myrtle Beach, Socastee, Carolina Forest and the St. James attendance areas, as well as renovations and additions to two other schools.

The district has budgeted $161.7 million to build five new schools, Gardner said. The total cost of the project, including land and renovations, is $451.6 million.

The board unanimously approved the purchase in April.

The district must now find another plot large enough to hold a middle school in the Socastee community. DeFeo said the board is looking at three or four properties in the area and hopes to complete a purchase in the next two months.

DeFeo said the lack of land should not impact when the new school will be completed.

“If the search for land carries on for more than three or four months it’ll impact the timeline,” DeFeo said. “And if it does, it will only impact this one school; fortunately this particular school is the one that’s not as overcrowded as the other schools.”

The next step in the district’s building project is for a selection committee – which previously chose four design/architecture firms to submit project proposals – to interview each firm and select who will build what school, DeFeo said.

Once the selection committee settles on architects a resolution will be brought to the full board, DeFeo said. The selection committee should meet again in five or six weeks, DeFeo said.

DeFeo said all five new schools should be complete by August 2017.

This story was originally published June 30, 2015 at 4:27 PM with the headline "Horry County School Board cancels 30 acre land purchase for new Socastee school."