App State has begun the process of developing a new master plan, which will guide the university’s development over the next several years, Chancellor Heather Norris announced Jan. 9 in a weekly message. This will replace the previous Master Plan 2025, which was created in 2017 under former Chancellor Sheri Everts.
“The plan is, right now, to have a draft initial report for the board of trustees retreat in June,” said Jeff Pierce, the director of planning, design and construction for App State.
The new master plan comes after Norris was named chancellor last year. Master plans are made about every 10 years and often align with new chancellor appointments.
“It gives them an opportunity to put their thumbprint and make their mark while they’re here,” Pierce said.
App State sent out a survey Jan. 15 via email to students and staff to gather opinions for the new master plan.
“There has been a big effort on this team to get as many opinions as possible from the App State community,” said senior management major Hampton Smith, the assembly speaker for the Student Government Association at App State as well as an intern for App State’s Division of University Operations.
“We want to see students come to us,” Smith said.
Shea Tuberty, a professor in the biology department at App State, said in an interview that he had not yet been consulted by the new master planning committee, despite having played a role in the inception of the Boone Creek Daylighting project, one of the university’s ongoing projects.
Tuberty said he was part of a team that initially proposed the project to the university in 2009 and has been studying the creek for 15 years.
The project is one of a few seemingly unimplemented major projects listed on the original Master Plan 2025.
The project would uncover the creek from underground culverts in the area of Peacock Hall and Edwin Duncan Hall and restore it to an open-air green space much like Durham Park, according to the university’s current living master plan.
“It’s a great amenity for campus,” said George Santucci, the Town of Boone’s sustainability and special projects manager. “It would really go a long way to preventing damaging flooding.”
The project would also restore the creek to a living ecosystem.
Santucci said the current plan would uncover the creek from the upper end of Peacock lot down to Edwin Duncan Hall. The Peacock lot would be demolished to uncover the creek, and a new parking deck would have to be constructed to make up for the lost parking spaces. A bridge would also have to be built over the stream.
Tuberty said he was surprised at the reduced scale of the project, which he had anticipated to be a total restoration from the area near Jimmy Smith Park, where the creek goes underground, to the Varsity Gym, where it emerges.
“I’m afraid that the scale of it isn’t going to absorb the storm water levels that we’re going to see in the future,” Tuberty said.
Santucci said the scale was reduced because a plot of private land near Jimmy Smith Park would block demolition and because of a lack of feasibility for a green space in front of Edwin Duncan Hall.
The project is currently stalled due to a lack of funding, Pierce said. He said the Army Corps of Engineers offered to help fund the creek renewal project alongside App State and the New River Conservancy, which is funded in part by the town of Boone.
“If it comes to one of their priorities, the Army Corps of Engineers will fund 65% of the cost of that project,” Pierce said. “We also got our portion of it, which is between us and the town of Boone, and is about 35% of the cost.”
On top of this, some necessary items, including the bridge and parking deck, were omitted from the Army Corps’ funding. Pierce said these would cost the university around $8 million.
Other projects not completed from the previous master plan are the demolitions of LS Dougherty Hall, IG Greer Hall and East Hall. A new academic building was to replace Greer Hall, and a ceremonial campus entrance was to take the place of East Hall.
Instead of demolition, LS Dougherty received renovations to a selection of its windows, with the remaining windows to be replaced over the summer. The heating, ventilation and air conditioning system will also be replaced.
“We’re going to put in mini-splits, which are a more efficient type of heating and cooling,” Pierce said. The university is also looking into adding an elevator or ramp to improve accessibility to the second floor.
IG Greer will also undergo renovations instead of being demolished.
“You’ll see the replacement of that roof and also some brickwork on IG Greer,” Pierce said.
App State is currently working to get a quote for East Hall’s demolition.
East Hall is currently being used as a swing space for displaced office spaces from Edwin Duncan Hall’s ongoing renovations.
Many projects on the previous master plan were passed over because they lacked a “resource roadmap,” Pierce said. Without clear cost estimates and funding plans, these projects were deemed unviable.
On the new master plan, App State is making a “concentrated effort” to properly track the needs of the university, Pierce said.
The previous master plan oversaw the completion of several major projects, including the construction of Holmes Drive Parking Deck, Leon Levine Hall of Health Sciences and Wey Hall’s renovation, as outlined in the university’s Master Plan 2025 page.
In a transcript from a faculty and staff meeting on Feb. 6, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice Chancellor JJ Brown said Edwin Duncan Hall’s renovation “remains on track for completion this spring.” Peacock Hall’s addition is slated for completion in 2027. Appalachian 105’s student housing, which will offer about 850 beds, is scheduled for completion in fall 2027.
