Former Mann site gets new use

By Cindy Landrum  

JUNE 23, 2011 1:40 p.m. (0)

Design work on a new Greenville County middle school should start soon.

Members of the Greenville County Schools board are expected to award an architectural contract for a new middle school planned for the old J.L. Mann High site on Isbell Lane at its regular monthly meeting Tuesday night.

The old high school will be demolished, said Oby Lyles, district spokesman.

The new middle school, which does not yet have a name, is expected to cost $26 million, according to the school district’s long-range facilities plan.

While growth has slowed significantly in Greenville County, the new middle school is one of several construction projects the school district says it will need over the next seven years to cope with overcrowding and enrollment growth.

Without construction, the school district said it would be 550 seats short at the middle school level in the southeastern and central portions of the county by 2015.

The planned 750-seat middle school would relieve overcrowding at Beck, Bryson, Hillcrest, Mauldin and Riverside middle schools.

The new middle school would open in August 2014.

In addition, the district’s long-range facilities plan calls for the district to add 250 seats to Rudolph Gordon Elementary and turn it into a K-8 school between 2016 and 2018.

The conversion would ease overcrowding at Rudolph Gordon, Bryson Middle, Hillcrest Middle and Riverside middle.

Other projects included in the district’s long-range plan include a 400-student addition to Woodmont High by 2015.

Two other new schools – a high school in southern Greenville County and a middle school in the northern end – are included in the plan designed to accommodate the district’s projected enrollment through 2025.

Seven other elementary and high schools are slated to get additions as well.

Site work for the middle school at the old J.L. Mann site is expected to begin during the 2011-12 school year, Lyles said.