Land in hand, Davidson Day needs $5M to start new campus
Posted By Christina Ritchie Rogers On May 1, 2012 @ 11:54 am In Mooresville,Schools | Comments Disabled
Mooresville Mayor Miles Atkins welcomes Davidson Day School to the community during a gathering on the future campus site Monday. (Christina Ritchie Rogers / DavidsonNews.net)
Davidson Day School should be able to break ground on a new high school campus in Mooresville this year, school officials said at a gathering on the site Monday. A group of parents and supporters recently gave the school 40 acres off Faith Road, where the school plans to build a college-style campus for grades 7 -12, with multiple buildings, common areas and top-quality athletic facilities. The next task is to raise about $5 million needed to start the work, officials said Monday.
“This is a necessity for Davidson Day School,” Capital Campaign Chair Eric Brown said. “We’re busting at the seams.”
Enrollment has grown annually by double-digits, and the school ultimately wants to double in size to 1,000 students – 500 in 7th through 12th grade, and 500 in pre-Kindergarten through 6th grade, Head of School Bonnie Cotter said. Currently, the school has about 515 students in grades pre-K through 12.
A group hears about construction plans at the site of the future Davidson Day Upper School campus. (Christina Ritchie Rogers / DavidsonNews.net)
The land was given to the school by Faith Road Enterprises, an investment group of Davidson Day parents, family members and friends that purchased 206 acres off Faith Road in Mooresville. The group donated 40 of those acres to the school, with an additional 25 or so available for future use as well, and plans to sell the rest to interested developers.
Because the school did not have to pay for the land, it is able to focus a capital campaign to pay for the project.
“We could not have done this if it wasn’t for families who really care enough about education,” Ms. Cotter said. “We don’t have a big endowment; we haven’t been around for 150 years like some of the independent schools up north.”
The school owns 15 acres in Davidson, and of those, just seven are build-able, Ms. Cotter said, so the school can’t expand in its current location. The school had been looking for land for a second campus for more than 2 years, she said – land that was easily accessible from the highway, and in close proximity to the Davidson campus. The land in Mooresville – along Faith Road, just off N.C. 115, meets both criteria.
The school has not set a date for breaking ground, but Ms. Cotter would like to start “as soon as possible.” It all depends on when the capital campaign can raise enough money, she said.
Head of School Bonnie Cotter shares the preliminary campus design. (Christina Ritchie Rogers / DavidsonNews.net)
The campaign has raised $2 million so far, and is on-track to reach $3 million this summer. Officials plan a public campaign in the fall in the hopes of reaching a goal of $5 to $7 million to complete the first phase of the project, which will include custom-designed classrooms and athletic facilities. And once the upper school moves to the new campus, the school will renovate its existing building in Davidson to optimize classroom space for pre-K through 6th grade.
The master plan for the new Mooresville campus includes:
- Spacious classrooms
- A science and math center
- An arts and humanities center
- Visual arts, music and performing spaces, including a fully-equipped theater
- State-of-the-art technology labs
- A Library
- A Dining Facility
- Athletic facilities and fields
Construction will be done in phases, as funding becomes available, officials say. Ms. Cotter hopes that some of the facilities will be built and shared through partnerships with public and private organizations, saving the school money while fostering good community relationships. Mike Marvin, of Faith Road Enterprises, said the group already has had preliminary discussions with interested developers, but would not share details.
“My goal is to build a $40 million campus for $10 million,” Ms. Cotter said. “We’re happy and eager to partner with the community.”
Mooresville Mayor Miles Atkins attended the gathering Monday, and extended a welcome to the school. The addition of Davidson Day School “compliments the fine educational programming we already have in this community,” he said.
RELATED COVERAGE
Jan. 10, 2012, “Mooresville OKs rezoning for Davidson Day’s 2nd campus.”
A diagram of the preliminary campus design, on display during the gathering Monday.
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Comments Disabled To "Land in hand, Davidson Day needs $5M to start new campus"
#1 Comment By Kris Krider On May 1, 2012 @ 5:13 pm
I wish Davidson Day all the best in their efforts to raise funds for a new high school. They have an outstanding track record in such a short number of years. Bonnie Cotter has done a great job and I always thought they were a great group to work with, despite some significant site challenges. I do wonder if some of their enrollment success is due to the Davidson location, in particular, accessibility to the interstate, a highly visible site and the Davidson community. I wonder whether a more suburban location will fair as well. High schools are car depenedent and can eat up a lot of land. Unfortunately, that means they end up in rural areas like W.A. Hough H.S. or, as in this case, South Iredell. If anyone can make it work though, it’s Davidson Day.
#2 Comment By George Berger On May 2, 2012 @ 8:39 am
Like Kris, I have a lot of faith (pardon) in the DDS folks that they’ll make something special at a second location. However, I would caution them about Faith Road, which is very narrow and heavily-used as a crossing connector between the Shearers Road/Hwy 3 corridor and Hwy 115 … the road is essentially one that hasn’t been widened that much since its original unpaved farm road days, and it was — DNN.Net readers will recall — where our neighbor Julie Zimmerman was almost killed two years ago in July while cycling by a distracted driver going much too fast. It would certainly help if Iredell County and Mooresville officials could work with NCDOT and the School to widen the entirety of Faith Road to the new ‘complete street’ standard, along with with appropriate facilities for bicycles and pedestrians.
A linked issue–ingress/egress and access–comes to mind because of a situation I found myself in the other day, stuck in a 30-minute-plus traffic jam at the end of the school day up at Lake Norman High School. There was a wreck on River Road, I think, and it was impossible for buses, student cars, parents with kids, and anyone else to get out of the school’s one-way in, one-way out access on Doolie Road. I wish the site plan being shown with the article was ‘zoomable,’ so it was possible to see if is/could be a second entrance, etc., for folks to use if/when Faith Road is blocked, or backed up. As suburban as the Hough/Bailey school locations are, at least they have three ways out of the area.
Again, I’m sure the school planners will do a good job; I’d just ask that they work closely with their public sector partners to fully consider the situation outside their property boundaries for the safety and convenience of their students, faculty and staff, and neighbors.