Shovels hit dirt Thursday morning on West Marion Road in Greenville, where Legacy Early College broke ground on a $60 million campus expansion designed to serve hundreds more students in the Upstate. The groundbreaking ceremony was scheduled for 11 a.m. on the 55-acre site, marking a major step forward for a charter school network that has been turning away far more applicants than it can accept.
According to FOX Carolina, the new campus will serve students from kindergarten through eighth grade and is expected to accommodate up to 1,300 students once it opens. School officials told the station that attendees heading to the ceremony could follow directional signs posted along West Marion Road to find event parking.
The property sits in Greenville's Berea neighborhood, west of the city, according to the Greenville Journal. Once complete, the new campus will replace two existing Legacy sites: its elementary school on West Washington Street and its K4 Center on Bramlett Road, the Journal reports. Harper General Contractors is overseeing construction of the project, which includes a planned 184,000-square-foot academic building.
Conflicting Timelines on When the Doors Open
Exactly when students will walk into the new building depends on which report you read. FOX Carolina's Thursday coverage put the opening at fall 2028. Earlier reporting told a different story: the Journal's November 2025 coverage said construction was expected to be complete by fall 2027, while The Post and Courier reported that Legacy founder William Brown said the campus would open in fall 2027.
The design itself carries some architectural pedigree. The campus was designed by Moody Nolan, which FOX Carolina notes was recognized as the first African American-owned firm to receive the American Institute of Architects' Architecture Firm Award.
Funding Built From Donations and a Land Purchase
Money for the project has been coming together in pieces. Legacy Early College launched a $25 million capital campaign to help fund the $60 million build, per the Journal's reporting. The school later received an anonymous $2 million donation toward construction, and by the time that gift was announced more than $10 million had been raised overall. The underlying land was no small purchase either — Legacy bought the property for $3.49 million in 2024, according to the Greenville County Register of Deeds as cited by the Journal.
Why Legacy Needs the Room
The expansion comes as Legacy Early College has been operating at full capacity, with more than 1,600 students enrolled, the Journal reported. Demand far outpaces what the school can offer: Legacy receives about 1,000 new applications every year, and its chief schools officer told the Post and Courier the school has room for fewer than 25 percent of applicants. The school also reported a 97.2% graduation rate for 2025, per the Journal.
That squeeze is playing out against a broader shift in how South Carolina funds charter-school construction. The state budget approved in August set aside $75 million for rural and charter school capital projects, according to The State, money that can only go toward buildings whose primary purpose is in-person 4K-12 classroom instruction. The State reported that South Carolina charter schools served roughly 65,000 students statewide the prior year, and that since 2019 the General Assembly has made more than half a billion dollars available for rural-district facility construction — but had not previously extended that kind of assistance to charter schools.
A Similar Push Underway in Columbia
Greenville isn't the only Upstate-adjacent community watching a charter school break ground on a bigger home. In Columbia, Ethos Academy is building a $32.3 million campus at 609 Clif Kinder Road, described by school officials as a private investment with no cost to local taxpayers, according to WACH. That campus, expected to open in August 2027, will serve pre-kindergarten through sixth grade with plans to expand through eighth grade, and WACH reports it will be Lower Richland's first public charter school.
For now, the focus in Greenville stays on West Marion Road, where construction crews are set to begin turning 55 acres of land into classrooms for a school that, by its own enrollment numbers, has long since run out of room.
