How to Renovate Transylvania Schools? Henderson Might Have Some Answers.
As Transylvania County Schools' renovation plan faces a budget crisis, the work to rebuild Hendersonville High School is ahead of schedule and under budget, thanks to an unlikely assist from Covid-19.
HENDERSONVILLE — You wouldn't know it from Hendersonville High School’s freshly renovated gym or brand-new chemistry lab and wood shop.
You’d never guess it from the gleaming cafeteria and media center, and certainly not from the praise heaped on the construction team for working under budget and ahead of schedule.
But three years ago, the whole, years-long effort to replace or renovate Hendersonville High was all but dead.
Tired of fighting with the Henderson County School Board and discouraged by reports that the job would come in either $11 million over budget or without a second gym or auditorium, the Henderson County Commission in July of 2018 voted to — as one commissioner put it, according to meeting minutes — “pull the plug.”
“They took their ball and went home,” Henderson County School Board Chair Blair Craven said in a recent interview.
Some of this should sound familiar in Transylvania County, where skyrocketing construction costs are forcing the revision of a $68-million plan to renovate Brevard High School and Rosman Middle and High schools.
That Henderson not only rescued its own school-restoration effort, but put it on a path for completion before the start of next school year — about 11 months earlier than expected — could offer valuable lessons here.
“Everybody has to work together,” Craven said, referring to county commissioners and board members. And they need to focus not on short-term political fallout but on the long-term goal of creating a school that will serve students for decades.
“It’s not going to get any cheaper 10 years from now,” he said. “Rip the Band-Aid off and get it over with. It'll be worth it.”
In Transylvania
The unlikely hero in Henderson’s school-rehab story is the Covid-19 pandemic, which closed schools and allowed construction crews freedom to work without accommodating students.
“The timing worked out perfectly for us,” Craven said.
In Transylvania, meanwhile, Covid has filled its familiar role as arch-villain. By the time bids went out earlier this year, pandemic-related price increases had added a projected $18.2 to the cost of the project, forcing the School Board in July to delay construction while it considers revised plans.
More recently, the School Board has also delayed its discussion of these options.
That was originally set for its Sept. 20 meeting, then rescheduled for today’s (Oct. 4) meeting. But because school staff and the construction team are still refining plans, it won’t happen then either, Schools Superintendent Jeff McDaris said last week.
School Board member Kimsey Jackson said he thinks such conversations should take place in public and as soon as possible and expressed this concern to Board Chair Tawny McCoy.
She assured Jackson, he said, that the Board would address the project shortly, probably in a special meeting.
“It’s past time that this has been in front of the board,” Jackson said. “We need to sit down and talk with (the contractor and architect) and find out where they are and make a decision about how to move forward as a board.”
The Same
The project in Henderson County bears some striking similarities to the one in Transylvania, including the urgent need to address conditions created by years of neglect.
“They were just flat holding it together with bailing wire,” Henderson County Construction Manager David Berry said of the old high school there. On a recent visit to Brevard High School, meanwhile, Norris Barger, the district’s director of Business Services and Facilities and Plant Operations, pointed to rotting supports of the school’s 62-year-old gym and cafeteria.
As is true of the job in Transylvania, the $60-million renovation in Henderson is the most expensive public project in county history. And both efforts have been at least partly shaped by the politics of school loyalty.
In Henderson, this pushed the Board to advocate an approach that included renovating the school’s historic Stillwell Building.
“The alumni (of Hendersonville High), of which there are many in Henderson County, have an attachment to the school that is pretty much unsurpassed,” Berry said.
In Transylvania, ties between the schools and their towns, especially Rosman, muted talk of savings that could come from consolidating schools or even expensive athletic or vocational programs, said former Commission Chair Mike Hawkins, who previously served as a county representative on the joint School Bond Construction Committee.
“The narrative is out there, and it’s what people believe, that if you ever brought that up there would be a firestorm,” he said of consolidation.
Transylvania has also hired the same team that was originally in place in Henderson — Vannoy Construction and the Clark Nexsen architecture firm.
But the Henderson Commission voted to replace Clark Nexsen after scrapping a plan to build an all-new school in favor of the current hybrid approach: This called for 95,000 square feet of new construction and the restoration of Stillwell. Transylvania’s plan calls for a similar mix of demolition, renovation and new facilities.
Henderson officials made the change not because of dissatisfaction with Clark Nexsen, which continues to work on other county projects, but because the team of architects that won the job came up with a better scheme to incorporate Stillwell, Craven said.
“They came through like a shining star,” he said of the new team. “Once you saw their plan, you could see it was just what needed to happen.”
. . . But Different
In Henderson, however, the commission — which, as is true throughout North Carolina, holds funding power over schools — asserted the lead role.
In Craven’s account, the project turned the corner after the budget crisis of 2018 forced the commission to listen to the School Board, with the ultimate result being agreement between the two bodies on the current, successful plan.
“We brought them back to the table,” Craven said.
“Since the commission held the checkbook, it led to some serious disagreements over what the taxpayers were willing to fund,” said Commission Chair Bill Lapsley, “but we worked it all out.”
In Transylvania, the price was approved by voters in a 2018 bond referendum. The board has so far declined to request additional funds and a 2019 interlocal agreement with the County gave schools sole control over the project and granted the county “no supervisory authority.”
But another key factor in determining the costs of the two jobs — probably the key factor — is far beyond the authority of local officials.
The pandemic arrived late enough that schools have reopened in Transylvania and early enough to boost construction costs before bids came in. One example, according to a document summarizing these quotes: the price of drywall soared from an estimated $3 million to a whopping $7.8 million.
In Henderson, by contrast, Covid forced the closure of schools as the project entered its main phase, Berry said during a tour of the Hendersonville campus last month, allowing “us to do a lot more work in places that would have been off limits if the kids were here.”
“State of the Art”
The reason for the Board’s insistence on restoration was obvious on that visit and the first glance of the impressively columned, 66,000-square-foot, 95-year-old Stillwell Building.
It has “the ‘good bones’ and detailed craftsmanship we often see in buildings of that era,” Maggie Carnevale, of Asheville’s PFA Architects, wrote in an email to NewsBeat. “The auditorium, in particular, is the heart of the old school.”
Last month, the auditorium’s floor was covered with scaffolding and stacks of construction materials that nearly reached its balcony. Elsewhere in Stillwell, walls and ceilings had been stripped away, and crews installed steel framing to accommodate the larger classrooms the state now requires, as well as a modern communications network and ducts for an up-to-date ventilation system.
The overall goal, Carnevale wrote, is to preserve the building’s history while making it “suitable for modern educational program(s).”
Such modern amenities are everywhere in the new building. Originally scheduled to open before the fall term of 2022, it was available — supplemented by tightly packed rows of temporary mobile classrooms — to serve as the main high school by this August.
Berry showed off expansive classrooms with wall-mounted “smart monitors,” and athletic dressing rooms featuring closet-sized lockers with red, steel-mesh doors.
In the refurbished school gym, the floor gleamed in natural light streaming in through tall, frosted-glass windows. Adjustable panels can fine-tune the acoustics of the band room, which also offers storage space that was sorely lacking at the old school, Berry said.
Windows in the cafeteria look out on what will soon be a garden-like courtyard, and the kitchen is equipped with stainless steel counters and ovens that would be the envy of most restaurants, Berry said.
“This is a state-of-the-art high school facility,” he said.
Yes, he acknowledged, there has been some grumbling about the cost, especially considering that Hendersonville is only one of four high schools in the county.
“Can you go to the barbershop and find somebody saying, ‘I can’t believe they’re spending $60 million on a school?’ Yes, you can find those people,” he said.
But when he arrived at a health science classroom, teacher Robyn Iuliano was happy to take on both tour-guide duties and the big question that will soon face the Transylvania Board: How much is too much?
She showed off the three hospital beds and supply closets that mimic conditions her students will face on the job. She gloried in the spaciousness of the classroom, where the light from big windows shone on a red-and-gray tiled floor.
“One-hundred percent,” she said, when asked if the expense was justified. “The kids are worth it. It just makes it so much nicer for the children.”