A master plan designed for a proposed new Swain County Middle School and athletic fields at a now county-owned site on Black Hill Road calls for a 100,000-square-foot school, baseball field and a new football field and track.
Swain County officials think the proposed new middle school on Black Hill Road will fix many of their problems with the current one, and while funding is still in the works, they’re confident the proposed plans will work out.
The current estimated cost of construction for a proposed 100,000-square-foot new middle school and athletic fields is $38.7 million, an estimated $387 per square foot. Athletic fields are estimated to cost $560,000. Construction costs and other expenses make up the rest of the price tag, according to documents from the schools that will be used to apply for a Critical Needs Grant for $52 million – the maximum funded.
The map of the proposed new facility and grounds shows a similar three-building setup to the current one, with buildings for a gymnasium, classrooms and a cafeteria all connected to one another in a triangular formation.
New proposed athletic fields include a baseball field, a football field and a track, stretching across the countryside area off Black Hill Road across to Fontana Road, which the school system thinks will be a positive as it is close to the high school.
Superintendent Mark Sale said by email there are currently 376 middle school students enrolled in the county, and the new Black Hill Road site would have capacity for up to 500.
The current middle school was built in the 1930s, with the last big update occurring in the 1990s. Sitting on a 13-acre parcel, the 70,000 square-foot size of the current school is 25,000 square feet below what’s recommended for a school of this size.
The school is split into three unconnected buildings in which students and faculty must go outside to get between them. School officials want to change that to eliminate security risks. In addition, the long walks required to get to some parts of the school could result in “lost instructional time,” the application states.
Sale said the Black Hill Road location will fix those problems and have all the buildings connected internally.
There are also maintenance concerns with the school’s heating, air conditioning, flooring and plumbing, and several facilities, including work spaces and the kitchen and cafeteria, are thought to be too small. The application says the sanitary sewer system for the kitchen is also failing.
The school board conducted a walkthrough of the current school this past January and concluded that building a new school would be better than continually repairing everything on the current building.
The application also notes the current building could be used for other things such as providing “relief to other significant facility needs,” including the aging Pre-K campus, district maintenance facilities or bus garage facilities.
Construction is planned to start by March 2025 if the county can get the funding. The tentative completion date is August 2027, according to the application.
Running into problems
At the last county commission meeting, the commissioners approved a resolution to apply for the grant in a split vote. Concerns were expressed after Town of Bryson City officials brought up challenges related to the town’s aging sewer system, which they said needed to be solved before a school could be operational at the Black Hill Road location.
County Manager Kevin King said this week he is confident about the county’s chances of being awarded the grant despite the uncertainty that seemed to arise at the recent meeting. “Anything is doable,” he said. “We will try to work with engineers and people in the know. We’ve been working with the town engineer, McGill Associates, and we came up with a generalized plan. We already kind of knew there were some upgrades that had to happen.”
He said some of the main challenges will involve upgrading the facility from the industrial site it was in decades past.
While there was still the chance that the grant wouldn’t be awarded to Swain County, in part due to the competitive nature and the county’s Tier 2 economic status, King said they would keep plugging ahead even if they didn’t get the money.
“We’ll hold onto the property until we do get the grant, or we’ll get the money another way to build the school,” he said. “It has been identified as a middle school property. It is designated for school construction.”
Town Engineer Nate Bowe said this week one issue at the proposed new site is a pumping station at the old Powell Lumber property, which transmits sewer to the plant.
“We need to study what the potential effects to this pumping station would be, and what solutions are available to us, if the middle school is moved across the river to the north side thereby adding to what this pump station already must handle,” he said.
Ultimately, Bowe too, was confident things would work out. “I remain optimistic. I feel like there’s enough time for all of us to reach the point that the project can get completed.”
The town is currently applying for a planning grant for an independent analysis from the League of Municipalities that would look into the water and sewer systems that would service the proposed new middle school, he said. The town has also met privately with the school system on those issues. The goal is a “cooperative partnership” with the schools to make things work seamlessly.
“We want no changes,” he said. “Once it’s hooked up, you can forget about it. That’s the goal. We’re doing our job if you’re not thinking about it.”