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LISD buys land for 3 campuses

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Growth in the southern end of the Leander Independent School District is explosive, a trend expected to continue for the foreseeable future. LISD confronted that growth in a big way last week, signing contracts for two pieces of property. The deals will pave the way for three new campuses.

The biggest land deal was for the Ribelin Ranch property, a 111.879-acre tract located off RM 2222, south of the 3M plant. The tract, purchased for $25,049,530, will be the site of a high school and a middle school.

Funds to purchase the property were part of Proposition 1, the school construction bond package approved by LISD voters in May 2006. The money was included based on recommendations from the bond committee for LISD to become more aggressive in purchasing land for future school needs.

The district also contracted to buy the 40.275-acre SASOL North America property off of RR 620 near Grandview Hills for $14.6 million. The site contains a one-story complex of buildings with a total of more than 100,000 square feet, which will be repurposed to become LISD Elementary #19.

SASOL (originally South African Steenkolen en Olie) is an international chemical research and development company. The company closed the Austin facility two years ago, relocating the operation, along with about 40 research jobs, to Westlake, La., near Lake Charles.

Elementaries #18 (in the River Place subdivision) and #19 will open for the 2007-08 school year. Opening dates for the new high school and middle school are still in the air. The district doesn't currently have funds for construction of a fifth high school.

“I'm very excited to see this happen,” said Max Moss, who helped promote the bond through Leander Kids First PAC. “It's exactly what we intended when we worked for passage of the bond, and it is without a doubt the direction the school district needed to go.”

The district may use the SASOL site for some type of support facility as well as a school - possibly a transportation hub, said Trustee Pam Waggoner. Details have yet to be ironed out, however. “We moved on this deal pretty quick, so plans are not completely laid out,” she said.

At just over 100,000 square feet, the facility's size is comparable to current elementary campuses, said LISD Communi-cations Director Bill Britcher, who added that reorganizing the buildings to accommodate an elementary school will take some study. “We're still early in the process,” he said. “We will have to have an architect come out and look at the facility.”

The district might not need all that space at first, said Waggoner. “The new elementary will probably be smaller than others in the district,” she said. Normally, LISD elementary campuses are designed for about 850 students, but Elementary #19 will likely house around 650 students.

LISD jumped at the chance to get the Ribelin tract, Waggoner said. “It was a good deal. The land is flat, and there isn't a lot of flat land left in that area.”

Trustee Jim Sneeringer agreed. “We didn't want that piece of land to get away,” he said. LISD had been hunting for school sites in the Four Points area for 18 months. “The Ribelin tract was a relatively late entry,” he said.

The opportunity to buy the SASOL property also came quickly, Sneeringer said. Not only was it in a ideal location, the price was attractive, he added.

At one time, LISD seriously considered purchasing property near RM 2222 and RM 620, formerly owned by Schlumberger, an oilfield services company that sold its Austin campus to Lionstone Partners Ltd. of Houston in December 2005.

The Ribelin property turned out to be a better deal for the school because it is flat and because it doesn't contain protected wildlife habitat as does the Schlumberger tract. “The Schlumberger property has a lot of wildlife preserve on it,” Britcher said. “The district would have had to purchase the preserve and that land would not have been usable.” LISD's portion of the Ribelin Ranch property does not have a wildlife preserve.

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