Pasco County Schools and Connerton Property Charter LLC, the developer of Connerton, have approved an agreement regarding the construction of a charter school, in the master-planned community off of U.S. 41, in Land O’ Lakes.
The school will be built on a site including 14.2 acres within Villages 3 and 4 of Connerton.
The developer and school board also have approved a step-in agreement, in the event it is needed in the future.
The board approved the agreements at its Nov. 16 meeting. The items were part of the board’s consent agenda, meaning they were approved along with other items without discussion, in a single action.
Under the charter school agreement, the developer will build a K-8 charter school that will have the capacity for 1,400 students, according to the board’s agenda packet.
Plans call for a campus with single- and two-story tilt-wall buildings up to 118,000 square feet.
The project will include a black box theater and a “cafetorium” with a similar style and finish of the Pinecrest Academy K-8 charter school in Avalon Park West.
There also will be athletic fields, circulation and parking.
The current proposal calls for the charter school to be a Pinecrest Academy Charter School, but the developer has the right to use any charter school that has an approved charter with the school board.
The goal is to open the new charter school in the 2023 school year.
The agreement also notes that the charter school shall be designed and constructed according to 2020 State Requirements for Educational Facilities, and the design is subject to review and approval by the director of construction services or a designee, the board materials say.
Once the charter school is complete and students are enrolled, the entity that paid for the design, permitting and construction of the charter school shall be entitled to school impact fee credits.
The agreement states that the maximum amount of fee credits shall not exceed $27,932,800, which is based on 1,400 student stations multiplied by $19,952 per student station.
Also, the land value for the fee credits shall be based on the actual purchase price, including closing costs, paid by the developer, the agreement says.
The agreements also spell out how those fee credits shall be paid and what will happen, in the event that the property ceases to be used as a charter school.
Published December 08, 2021
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