A church will pay for the construction of two parking lots and drainage and utility work for a new Clark-Pleasant elementary school.
In exchange for Harvest Bible Chapel putting money towards construction work, the school district is giving the chapel nearly 16 acres of land to construct a church building on.
The new elementary school will border the site of the chapel’s future church building to the west. Both sites are on the north end of the campus that contains Grassy Creek Elementary School and Clark-Pleasant Middle School. The new elementary should be open in time for the 2021-22 school year.
The site work should be completed by the end of August, which is about the same time the district plans to start construction of the new school.
Harvest Bible Chapel will put $850,000 into an escrow account to pay for the work this summer, the chapel’s executive pastor Mark Wiley said. While the exact cost of the work will be determined when general contractor, Indianapolis-based T and W Corp. and Church Solutions bids construction work out to subcontractors, the money in the escrow account helps serve as insurance for the district if the chapel backs out of the deal for any reason, he said.
The timeline for the construction and opening of the church has not yet been determined, Wiley said, but it is becoming more and more of a necessity. The church, which started with 70 members, now has an average of about 1,000 people attend weekend services. Services are currently held at Clark-Pleasant Middle School and the increase in churchgoers has caused the chapel to consider adding a third weekend service, he said.
While the two parking lots will be split, with one on the site of the church and one on the site of the new elementary school, the school will be allowed to use the church parking lot if crowds for a school event overflow during weekdays, and the church will be allowed to use the school’s parking lot if a weekend church service overflows, Clark-Pleasant Business Director Jay Staley said.
Along with parking lots, drainage and utility work, the chapel will also fund an access road from Worthsville Road to the east side of a neighboring football field. That construction of the access road will not be included in what gets taken out of the escrow account, as the road will be used primarily by the church, Wiley said.
