Fayetteville board approves grading permit for Ramey Junior High; city easement to preserve trees off-site

The Fayetteville Board of Education on Aug. 28 approved a grading permit to allow geotechnical borings and initial site work for the proposed Ramey Junior High campus and chose an off-site tree preservation easement at Happy Hollow in lieu of an on-site easement.

The decision follows a lengthy public comment period in which neighbors and parents raised concerns about removing trees on the College Avenue parcel, traffic flow, and stormwater runoff. Several speakers urged the district to find alternative sites or preserve larger portions of the forested parcel. “This project will cost taxpayers millions to build and millions more to maintain,” said Andrea Forney, a local business owner and longtime critic of building on the hillside, adding that preserving the existing woodland would be “a priceless asset for our whole city.”

District architects and landscape designers presented a detailed design update and a plan that the design team said aims to balance new construction with conservation goals. Rebecca Sibley of Prism Design Studio described how the building and site are intended to integrate with the forest: “Classrooms are distributed on 3 floors, seventh grade students at the First Floor, eighth grade students on the Third, and shared learning spaces on the Second Floor. Each level experiences views into the trees or landscape.” The team said the project is pursuing multiple sustainability certifications, including LEED, WELL and SITES, and will be a fully electrified campus with a mass-timber structure to reduce embodied carbon.

Designers and district staff described a multi-layered stormwater-management approach intended to slow, detain and infiltrate runoff on-site rather than allow concentrated sheet flow to reach College Avenue. Hunter Atkinson, landscape architect, said the strategy combines distributed bioswales, check dams and underground detention to “slow the flow of water, filter it, and clean it, and improve the drainage conditions on-site,” and to create educational opportunities such as outdoor classrooms and vegetable gardens irrigated by captured rainwater.

Architects also described a compact, vertical campus concept—three academic levels with terraces and an elevated courtyard—to reduce total impervious footprint and preserve larger swaths of canopy compared with a sprawling, single-level campus.

Board members and the district said additional geotechnical borings will be done now to inform foundation design and that any borings required removal of a small number of trees to bring in equipment. Planning staff and the city required a tree-preservation easement equal to the disturbed acreage. The board voted 6-0 to approve the grading permit with the district’s proposed solution: establish the required preservation easement off-site, adjacent to an existing easement at Happy Hollow, rather than on the Ramey parcel itself.

Superintendent Damian Mulford said the district bought the parcel from a private developer; the superintendent and members of the design team said school ownership gives the district the option to preserve more canopy than a typical residential subdivision would have preserved. Dr. Mulford said the district will continue to refine the design and site work and pursue the additional borings now that the grading permit has been approved.

The board’s vote allows the design team to proceed with more detailed geotechnical work and to continue design development toward construction documents. The architects said they aim to begin major site work in spring of 2026, contingent on permitting and final contract schedules.

Proponents and opponents of the site acknowledged shared goals—student safety, strong stormwater controls, and tree preservation—but differed on whether the College Avenue site is the right place for a junior high. Several speakers asked the district to hold additional town-hall meetings and to consider alternate, flatter district-owned parcels. Designers and staff said they are coordinating with the city’s 71B corridor and traffic-signal plans and working to improve pedestrian and bicycle connections that could reduce car trips to the site.

The board’s action was procedural and limited to permitting and easement placement; no final building permit or construction contract was approved at the meeting. The board will return to future meetings for construction approvals and further reviews as design and site engineering progress.