Billion dollar project completed

By Cindy Landrum  

MAY 23, 2011 8:29 a.m. (0)

Ten years after Greenville County Schools signed an agreement with Institutional Resources to manage a construction program so large it touched every area of the county, it celebrated its conclusion.

With the opening of A.J. Whittenberg Elementary in August, the district’s unprecedented $1.06 billion construction program officially came to an end.

“The promises made to our community have been fulfilled,” said Superintendent Phinnize Fisher.

Fisher, current and past board members and Institutional Resources officials said the construction program’s success was due to the political will and courage of the board.

“I don’t know that it could ever be done again,” said Bob Hughes, one of the three principals of Institutional Resources.

When then-Superintendent Rudolph Gordon issued a call in 1999 for creative ways for the district to address its construction needs and accelerate building, some schools had to put trashcans in hallways to catch rainwater because of leaking roofs.

Other schools had so many portable classrooms their campuses looked like Army barracks.

Best-case scenarios showed it would take the district 25 years to renovate and build the schools it needed.

It was more likely the school district would never catch up.

Developer Hughes and Institutional Resources came up with an alternative financing plan akin to a mortgage for homeowners that got around the bonding cap of 8 percent of assessed value of taxable property the school board was limited to under state law.

Institutional Resources proposed the district set up a nonprofit corporation called BEST, or Building Equity Sooner for Tomorrow, to sell the bonds needed to build all of the schools. The school district would build equity in the schools as the debt was paid down.

And they promised it could be done without raising taxes.

The original plan had a $784 million price tag and a four-year construction period. The final program, which cost $1.06 billion, renovated or added to 70 schools.

The plan sparked controversy throughout.

“You have to understand I don’t hear well,” said Ann Sutherland, a former school board member who was the plan’s most vocal opponent. “You should have been so lucky in those days.”

Trustee Lynda Leventis-Wells, who took Sutherland’s place on the board, thanked former school board members involved in the project.

“And, Ann, thank you for questioning it every step of the way,” she said.

The financing method, called “the Greenville Plan,” has been used by two other states.

Fisher said the construction plan improved instruction because classes are no longer held in old closets and on auditorium stages, each school has the infrastructure to support the latest technology and the schools have better lighting and heating and air conditioning systems.

Schools are safer because each has a “safety entrance” that requires visitors to enter through doors that lead directly to the school’s office, telephones are available in each classroom and surveillance cameras have been installed in each facility, she said.

More importantly, said Board Chairman Roger Meek, is that students have equal facilities no matter where in the county they live.

And the school district can now keep up with its building needs through its long range facilities plan and capital improvement program, Fisher said, so it won’t get in the same position again.

The district has implemented a preventative maintenance plan to lengthen the life expectancy of the schools, she said.

The district will open a new elementary school on Five Forks Road in the Simpsonville area in August 2012.

About 1,200 elementary students in southeastern Greenville County are expected to be reassigned due to construction of the new school or to relieve overcrowding at nearby schools.

The board will consider the plan in June.

The reassignment plan would also affect 220 elementary students near Brushy Creek Elementary and about 60 middle school students in the Berea, Tanglewood and Woodmont area.