The Cottontown Neighborhood Association board voted unanimously on Oct. 29 to state its opposition to Clear Dot Charter School locating at the former Jim Moore Cadillac dealership site.
The board of the Cottontown/Bellevue Historic District Neighborhood Association has formally voted to express its opposition to a charter school locating at a former car dealership site in North Columbia.
The unanimous Cottontown board vote came on Oct. 29, and the board subsequently issued a letter notifying Clear Dot Charter School Principal Lindsey Ott of its opposition to the site on Oct. 30.
The charter school is being proposed for 2222 Main St., the site of the former Jim Moore Cadillac dealership. That dealership, which sits on a five-acre tract that encompasses an entire city block, has been closed for a number of years.
The tuition-free, public charter school — which is being sponsored by the Charter Institute at Erskine College — hopes to open in fall 2019, and officials are looking at having a few hundred students the first year. However, at full operation — plans call for a $20 million project in which the school would come together in three phases over five years — the school could eventually have up to 1,300 students.
But the idea of a school that could one day have 1,300 students locating in Cottontown hasn't initially gone over well with some neighbors. On Oct. 22, residents of Cottontown, Elmwood and Earlewood, along with a number of local business and political leaders, gathered at The War Mouth (which is across Franklin Street from the would-be school site) to express concerns about the impact the school could have on the neighborhood.
Among their worries were that a five-acre block near downtown would come off the property tax rolls to make way for a nonprofit school. Already only abut 40 percent of the properties in the city are on the property tax rolls. Neighbors also have expressed dire concern about the traffic that would come with a school that could one day have 1,300 students, plus faculty and staff. The school and engineering firm Kimley Horn currently are in negotiations with the state Department of Transportation about traffic plans.
And now comes the formal opposition from the Cottontown Neighborhood Association board. In a letter to Ott, Cottonwood Association President Will Thrift hammered home concerns about traffic.
"Our primary concern over the location of the school is the increase in traffic within the neighborhood and surrounding major traffic arteries during the morning rush hour and then later throughout the afternoon each weekday as a direct result of Clear Dot’s stated business model of enrolling a majority of students whose parents commute to work from outside the city of Columbia," the letter reads, continuing, "[T]he Cottontown Neighborhood Association strongly urges the South Carolina Department of Transportation to demand that Clear Dot choose a more appropriate location that can better accommodate the number of vehicles associated with a school of this size."
The letter goes on to posit that Clear Dot would be "the antithesis of a community school" and expresses apprehension over how many kids from Cottontown and surrounding neighborhoods will end up going there.
The association board's letter also contends, "[T]he school that Clear Dot proposes is not the appropriate size to locate in Cottontown."
When reached by Free Times, Ott said she was disappointed that the Cottontown board voted to state its opposition to the school site before she had an opportunity to make a presentation at the neighborhood's fall meeting on Nov. 4.
When asked why the board voted on its position before that Nov. 4 meeting, Thrift said that Ott already addressed the board directly on Oct. 8. Ott said she still intends to make a presentation at the Nov. 4 meeting.
Ott also bristled at the idea, presented in the Cottontown board's opposition letter, that Clear Dot wouldn't be a community school.
"We have volunteered parking lots for people, we have volunteered an outdoor area that can be used for the community," Ott says. "I have no idea where they would come up with the determination that we never intended to be a community school."
Ott hasn't shied away from the fact that Clear Dot would be a school that would welcome children whose parents commute into the city from outlying areas. But she also insists kids from Cottontown and other nearby neighborhoods could attend.
"We want them to come to the school," Ott says of neighboring children. "I have a personal vested interest in having somewhere for children in my neighborhood [Skyland] to go, and I have friends in Earlewood that have children; I have a vested interest in having somewhere for them to send their kids. So, for people to say that we are only doing this for commuters is wildly inaccurate."
Free Times asked Thrift via phone about some of the school's early efforts to be inclusive of the the Cottontown community.
"They've been telling us all long that it's a community school and they want to work with the community," Thrift says. "They say they are going to share their parking spaces after hours with some of the businesses. That is all platitudes. That's very hollow. It's designed to throw us a bone."
At-large Columbia City Councilman Howard Duvall attended the community meeting about the school at The War Mouth on Oct. 22. The councilman and former Municipal Association director says he doesn't think the former car dealership is the right spot for Clear Dot.
"My opinion is that that is the wrong site for a major school, whether it be public or charter," Duvall told Free Times. "This is one of the premier corners in the city of Columbia. The corner of North Main, near Elmwood, ought to have robust mixed use on it, and not be taken up by a school."
The would-be school site is bordered by Main, Franklin, Sumter and Scott streets.
