With a ceremonial shoveling of dirt on a clear and warm October morning, Macon County signaled to the community and region that the long-talked-about Franklin High School replacement project was underway.
On Oct. 18, Macon County and Construction Manager At Risk Carroll Daniel held a groundbreaking for the project at Franklin High’s Panther Pit.
Starting in January, crews will tear down the Panther Pit. Above it, on the current FHS practice field, Carroll Daniel is to build a 265,000-square-foot, four-story school building at a cost of $135 million.
“The best is yet to come, and I cannot wait to see how our students will flourish in their new home at Franklin High School,” MCS Superintendent Josh Lynch said at the groundbreaking.
A well-timed grant, several 3-2 commissioner votes and finding a construction manager pushed this project to the start line.
It wasn’t just Franklin that got the joy of starting a long-awaited school project. In Highlands, the $9.5 million Highlands School additions got the green light, with work starting in late October.
The Highlands project will add four new classrooms, renovate two existing classrooms into PreK spaces, add three project labs, renovate the media center, add outdoor classrooms, renovate the middle school wing, deepen the school’s foundations, add intercoms, data and security systems, bi-directional radio amplifiers and a new fire alarm system for the middle school wing.
A $62 million gift
It all kickstarted in January at a special joint meeting of the Macon County Board of Commissioners, Board of Education and officials from the towns of Franklin and Highlands crammed into the Macon County Schools Central Office board room to meet then-N.C. Superintendent Catherine Truitt.
After local officials explained the FHS project to Truitt, an aide brought in a $62 million check from the Needs-Based Public School Grant Fund.
The grant was the springboard the FHS project needed, as it covered a large portion of the project cost. After a 2023 filled with frustrations and false starts, Macon County and its architectural firm LS3P got their golden ticket.
Finding contractors
Just over a week later at a Feb. 8 budget kickoff meeting, then-Macon County Manager Derek Roland presented what he called a “once in a generation budget,” which would fund the FHS project with the Highlands School expansion project. The FHS project would be funded mostly through a loan while the county would pay out of fund balance for the Highlands School work.
In that same meeting, by a 3-2 vote, the county commissioners approved starting a request for qualifications process to find a construction manager at risk. Commissioner Gary Shields, former FHS principal and project advocate, voted “aye” along with Commissioners Josh Young and Danny Antoine. Commissioners John Shearl and Paul Higdon criticized several facets of the projects, such as the cost, the eventual demolition of the current FHS and the location.
By a 5-0 vote, the county voted to start negotiations with Vannoy Construction to be the construction manager at risk for the Highlands School project.
On March 12, the county commissioners approved Carroll Daniel Construction of Gainesville, Georgia, as the Construction Manager At Risk for the FHS project. Carroll Daniel has built many schools in Georgia, but this is their first full school project in North Carolina. Six days later, the board approved pre-construction projects for both.
In the CM-At-Risk approval process, the completion date for the 265,000-square-foot building changed from the first day of school 2026 to 2027.
This put the project on the timeline to finish pre-construction by Aug. 5 and present the loan plan to the N.C. Local Government Commission in September.
Nailing down the costs
At a joint May 28 meeting of the Board of Education and county commissioners in the FHS Fine Arts Center, Roland presented the guaranteed maximum prices of $137,624,444 for the FHS project and $8,575,068 for the Highlands School project. These were increases from the last publicly discussed project prices of $118 million and $5.5 million, respectively, in 2023.
On Aug. 13, the commissioners approved borrowing up to $76.3 million to finance the construction of FHS, which was presented as now having a guaranteed maximum price of $134,867,674, just under $2.8 million less than previously stated.
Final approvals, shoveling dirt
On Sept. 10, the N.C. Local Government Commissioner approved Macon County borrowing $69 million in 20-year limited obligation bonds at 3.46%. According to the documents submitted as part of the bond, the guaranteed maximum price was up to $135,553,575.
Later that same day, the commissioners approved appropriating $7,983,983 from fund balance for the Highlands School project. This included up to $825,000 to mitigate the leaking underground diesel fuel tank discovered over the summer.
During that meeting, Commissioner Young said he lost faith in the project and said the price was “absurd,” feeling like there was just one cost increase after another. The final vote was 4-1 with Young against. Higdon was an unexcused absence as he had left the meeting early. Per board rules, that made his vote an “aye,” one of his only votes in favor of either school project.
With the money approved and pre-construction finished, it was all smiles on Oct. 18 as elected officials, dignitaries and school officials broke ground at The Pit. Five days later on Oct. 23, Highlands School followed suit.
Race to the finish
Since groundbreaking, Carroll Daniel has worked mostly on the Frogtown property behind the current school, cutting down and burning a hillside of trees in the days before Christmas. Equipment got moved out of The Pit around the same time and now, a blue Carroll Daniel screen and fencing surrounds the site.
Work began quickly in Highlands, with shovels in the ground a week after the groundbreaking. Issues popped up with the contractors not having enough LP gas for the school’s boilers. Vannoy has promised make-good as the project speeds toward a hopeful finish in less than a year.
Speaking before Christmas, Interim County Manager Warren Cabe said the new FHS’s “bones” will be going vertical sooner than people think, saying it could lead to a false sense of quickness.