With the demolition of the D building, construction at Chapel Hill High School kicked off over the summer and is planned to run until the end of 2020.
The renovation project will create a new campus layout enclosing a courtyard, while repairs will be done to the B and C buildings. This summer—after surveying and site work, including rerouting utilities—the D building, the trailers by it and some student parking were demolished.
The next steps include laying the new D building’s foundation and putting up its steel framing, Ashley Dennis of Moseley Architects said. New principal Charles Blanchard cautioned the steel work “could get a little loud.”
In a fourth-period address on the first day of school, Blanchard reminded students to keep out of “any fenced-in areas with signage [that] are obviously under construction.”
Most navigation across campus must funnel through the A building.
“After parking, I have to walk quite a while because there’s not that path between the C and D buildings,” senior Lulu Van Hook said. “But the rest is fine, since I have all my classes in the A building. It is somewhat hard to maneuver the halls.”
Students must now manage their time going between classes or from parking lots, sophomore Kyra Pollock said. “There are just a lot of people. I can’t always see where I’m going,” she added.
With outdoor space limited, sophomore Sofia Isaacs said she has to stake out a lunch spot quickly. “I can only sit in a few areas—I like eating my lunch outside,” she said.
Junior Jake Genderson had another concern. “I’m very upset they tore down the red tree in front of the theatre. I used to eat lunch out there,” he said.
Groundbreaking at Chapel Hill started on the morning of June 12, the week after the school year ended. Several prominent locals attended a ceremony, held in the courtyard between the A and B buildings, including Chapel Hill mayor Pam Hemminger and members of the school board. Teachers wore Tiger-gold shirts reading, “Please excuse our progress.”
Each speaker took no more than two minutes to talk about the historical and cultural significance of renovation at the decades-old campus. Superintendent Pamela Baldwin invited all the speakers, and later others at the event, to don hard hats, pose for photographs and use gold-headed shovels to dig into a mound of dirt laid for the occasion.
Mark Dorosin spoke on behalf of his fellow Orange County commissioners. “[This school] really is the core of our community. Like people, buildings evolve and change—this is the product of a truly collaborative effort,” he said. “Though it is a damp day today, nothing will dampen our spirits!”
The president of the Chapel Hill High School Parent-Teacher-Student Association, Kirsten Barker, said that students’ mental health would be tested during construction at the school—making it a “resilience-learning lab”—requiring flexibility and patience.
But some students are fairly unfazed by the construction.
“Sure, it does come along with inconvenient consequences,” senior Will Eble said, “but at the end of the day it has got to happen, and as long as there are teachers and students, you’re going to learn just as much.”
