Tracking tax dollars
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution first wrote about the nearly vacant Rivers Elementary School in 2011. Today’s story is about the sale of the school, which cost county taxpayers about $10 million to build, to an investment group for $5.17 million. It will provide office space for a large movie studio now under construction.
Fayette County is shedding itself of an elementary school that has never housed more than a few dozen students since the day it opened four years ago, but at a loss of more than $4 million to taxpayers.
An investment firm, River’s Rock II LLC, is acquiring Rivers Elementary School for $5.17 million. The company is building the American headquarters of British film giant Pinewood Studios, and the school will provide office space.
From the moment it opened, many taxpayers saw Rivers Elementary as a boondoggle built on enrollment projections that never came true. The school never came close to serving the 700 students that were expected to sit in its classrooms and walk its halls.
“It was just some God-awful decisions,” said Harold Bost Sr., a former Fayette County Commission chairman who co-founded the Fayette County Issues Tea Party. “We’re going to be paying for the miscalculation for a long time.”
Rivers Elementary was often cited as a prime example of how the Fayette school system overbuilt at a cost of millions of dollars. A state education official who monitored school construction once listed Fayette as among the more extreme cases of overbuilding in the state.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Fayette schools were adding 1,200 to 1,500 students a year. By spring 2007, Fayette had 22,498 students. By the next fall, though, enrollment had dropped by nearly 300.
But Fayette school officials proceeded with plans to build Rivers Elementary after the state projected that the school system’s enrollment would grow by 414 student in 2008.
Then the recession hit and the housing industry collapsed. The school system — and more specifically taxpayers — were now on the hook to build the school. The money to build it came from a voter-approved bond that carried penalties if the school wasn’t built.
The 86,000-square-foot school, built on 30 acres in the center of the county, never housed more than two dozen students in Fayette’s Mainstay program, a special education department. That program, and about 30 staff members, moved out of the school around July, said Melinda Berry-Dreisbach, a spokeswoman for the school district.
To deal with growing debt, Fayette has looked for ways to cut costs. Earlier this year, the current school board — with Chairwoman Marion Keys the only member who was on the board when the decision was made to build Rivers Elementary — closed four schools.
And now Rivers Elementary has gone Hollywood.
“It’s better to get $5 million than to get nothing,” said Steve Smithfield, who lives about two miles from the school. “I’m still concerned taxpayers are on the hook.”
School board Vice Chairman Bob Todd understands that concern. The board itself was initially concerned that the price of the sale was lower than the cost to build Rivers Elementary.
“But once we looked into it, it just made sense,” Todd said. “We didn’t need the building anymore. The return taxpayers will see on the sale of the school will be increased employment in the county and increased values of properties which, in turn, will ultimately impact the tax digest.”
Bost, who criticized many of the school-construction decisions of past school board members, now seems happy with the direction the current board and new Superintendent Jody Barrow are taking the school district.
“We have some possibilities of digging out from under this mess we found ourselves in,” Bost said. “It’s going to take a long time, (but) we’ll make it sooner or later.”
Officials with the Fayette Board of Education and River’s Rock II signed the deal in late May. River’s Rock is leasing the facility until the deal closes, according to the purchase and lease agreement obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Pinewood venture is expected to add $10 million in direct investment in Fayette’s economy and more than 3,400 high-paying jobs over the next decade. An additional 3,000 jobs are projected across the region as a result of the studio.
Rivers Elementary sits just across the road from one of the entrances to the 228-acre campus for Pinewood Studios, the British film giant whose successes include the James Bond and Harry Potter franchises.
The complex is set to open in January with five sound stages — including two that have already been built — and about 400,000 square feet of space. Movie production is expected to begin next spring or summer. The complex ultimately will grow to about 32 sound stages with 1.5 million square feet of space. It could become the largest movie-making complex east of the Mississippi River.
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