Baltimore-based New Story hopes to open a private school for children with special needs in this building at 3700 Hempland Road in West Hempfield Township.
An operator of private schools for children with special needs hopes to open a school in West Hempfield Township as part of a nearly $4 million project.
Baltimore-based New Story has bought a large, mostly vacant one-story office building at 3700 Hempland Road for $2.5 million.
It will spend another $1.4 million on renovations, including creating classrooms and play areas, to convert most of the space into a school.
New Story intends to start operating here next September with up to 60 children in grades K-12.
The school's opening, however, is subject to New Story obtaining state Department of Education licensing for the location.
"Lancaster County has been on our horizon for a long time," said Paul Volosov, founder and president of New Story.
"We're very excited to move ahead with this."
New Story could have as many as 130 employees serving 90 or more children here.
The sleek building off North Donnerville Road was developed in 1983 as the headquarters of International Signal & Control.
ISC, led by James H. Guerin, was a global defense contractor that later collapsed in a $1.14 billion contract fraud.
From 1997 to 2007, the 62,500-square-foot building's major tenant was MapQuest.
MapQuest then moved to Granite Run and now is in the Liberty North building in Lancaster city.
That left the Hempland Road building virtually vacant, except for the recent arrival of Holleran Consulting, which has 12,000 square feet.
Volosov was delighted to find a one-story building near the middle of Lancaster County, along Route 30 and with ample parking.
New Story's real estate arm bought the building from Donnerville Associates, according to courthouse records filed Oct. 3.
Donnerville Associates is a company formed by York contractor Harold Hogg, the developer of the building for ISC.
Bethanie S. Mackley of NAI Commercial Partners and Ruth Devenney of High Associates Ltd. handled the sales transaction.
The site is zoned I-2 (industrial). New Story won a zoning variance in July, allowing the school.
Volosov said New Story and a sister company have operated in Lancaster County "in a very small way" for 10 or 12 years.
Criticare, a home health care provider, has an office at 1821 Oregon Pike.
New Story runs a summer camp here and provides community-based behavioral health rehabilitation services.
It also serves 15 Lancaster County children at New Story schools in neighboring counties, according to testimony at the July zoning hearing.
"We've been looking for about three years for a way to very substantially increase our presence there," Volosov said.
The local site would be the 11th New Story school in Pennsylvania, if the state Department of Education approves.
As a licensed, private academic school for children with special needs, New Story would provide special-education classes, speech therapy, occupational therapy and behavioral therapy.
Enrollment would include students with autism and psychiatric, psychological or behavioral health issues.
New Story students would have challenges too severe to be handled by the child's public school.
The child's public school would pay for the child to attend New Story, which would compete with Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 as a service provider in the county.
"The reality is, with the right therapy, the right care and the right supervision, these kids can return to their home school," Volosov said.
He said helping New Story students go back to their home school is "our most important goal."
New Story and Criticare are among five companies operating under the Salisbury House umbrella.
The others are Growth Horizon, Salisbury Behavioral Health and PAHrtners Deaf Services.
Volosov began in business in Philadelphia in 1979.
He said he moved his corporate offices to Baltimore about 20 years ago "for family reasons."
