Around 90,000 cubic yards of earth, which will lower the former FHS practice field at least 13 feet, will be moved onto the now-treeless Frogtown property.
Macon County Schools Facilities Director Tracy Tallent gave that update on the FHS project at the Board of Education’s Jan. 27 meeting.
The Franklin High School upper practice field that is to be the site of the new 265,000-square-foot school will soon be dug up.
“All that dirt will be pushed to Frogtown,” Tallent told the board.
Zach Estes, assistant project manager with Carroll Daniel Construction, who is the construction manager at risk for the $135 million FHS project, confirmed the practice field area will be dug down around 13 feet in some areas. Most of the dirt will be placed on an engineered slope on the Frogtown property.
“For this portion of the earth moving activities on the project, there will be approximately 90,000 cubic yards of materials moved to that area,” Estes stated. He said it will take three to four months to dig down and remove the dirt. Most dump trucks can safely carry around 10-16 cubic yards of materials at once.
This removal of earth is to create the level on which the first floor of the new school will be.
The first floor of the new FHS will be level with the top of the new stadium bleachers. Below the southernmost part of the new FHS will be several locker rooms, according to project renderings.
Tallent said this “basement floor” will require around an additional 16 feet more in digging down in those areas near the stadium. Those locker rooms will be behind the main stadium stands and be field level.
Board Chair Jim Breedlove asked about making sure the students won’t be in danger. Tallent said the fencing around the entire area is designed to keep students out.
Moving the equivalent of thousands of dump trucks worth of dirt to the Frogtown property will precede work starting on the main building itself. The stadium is slated to be completed before the fall 2026 semester. The new school building is scheduled to be finished by the first day of school in August 2027. Demolition of the current FHS buildings will follow in the fall and winter of 2027-28.
As part of the work, Carroll Daniel will install a camera on the roof of the current FHS gym to make time-lapse videos.
Currently, workers are demolishing the current stadium fieldhouse and locker rooms. Crews are saving parts of those buildings for future use, Tallent said.
The Higdon property, across the street from FHS, is ready for the school buses. Currently, buses at FHS are parked behind the gym, but Carroll Daniel will need that space for future work. Using grindings from the old Macon Middle School track, two temporary parking lots have been built on the Higdon property. The one closest to Wayah Street will be for workers entering the construction zone. Tallent said they’ve contacted Duke Energy to install lights at these temporary parking lots.
“It’s exciting to see things coming together,” Tallent said.
School project updates
Work at the Macon Middle School track resumed the day after the Jan. 27 meeting. Tallent said GeoSurfaces needed temperatures of 50 degrees and higher to paint the stripes on the track and finish punch list items. The track replacement started in July and originally was to be completed in October. Delays with “organic material” found under the track and winter weather halted completion. The striping in the last week of January is the first work on the track since mid-November.
Board member Hilary Wilkes asked about the work requests for a design and build for the Highlands soccer field drainage system, which the board approved in December. Tallent said they only received one bid that met qualifications, so it would need to be re-bid. Wilkes wants the rebidding to be done to move the project forward and align with the county’s budget schedule.
It is hoped designing a new drainage system to catch the water coming off Satulah Road next to the soccer field will prevent the field from becoming a quagmire. The working plan is to get the soccer field drainage system project done this summer, but further discussions at a special Feb. 4 meeting raised more concerns.
As of the first of February, the boilers at Highlands School are operational, now running on LP gas. The boilers stopped working in October after contractors didn’t provide enough LP gas tanks to replace the underground diesel tank.
On Feb. 4, Tallent said they had a bid to refurbish the Nantahala School wastewater system for only $78,000.
More coverage from the Feb. 4 special called meeting will be in a future edition of The Franklin Press.