The next phase of development for Alamance Community College’s Bill & Nancy Covington Education Center along South Jim Minor Road is scheduled to begin early next year.
ACC’s trustees voted 11-0 during their latest meeting to increase the budget for the project by $600,000, from $1.25 million to $1.85 million, after the original architect selected in late 2024 to complete a “preliminary programmatic design,” Studio 310 of Raleigh, gave an inaccurate cost estimate, based on information that was provided for the discussion.
The trustees subsequently voted in May of this year to hire Hobbs Architects of Pittsboro to design the remaining phases of the veterinary project.
“When this barn was originally envisioned, it was envisioned as something that would work with the [agriculture] programs here,” ACC trustee and chairman of the trustees’ building and grounds committee Bill Gomory told his fellow board members earlier this month. “But, as it turned out, the demand for the vet tech program is significant.”
“It’s really not a barn anymore – it’s a lab; it’s a classroom,” ACC senior vice president for Student Learning & Workforce Development Dr. Justin Snyder elaborated for the trustees. “Once that space is there, the vet tech program will be out there multiple times a week.”
“There’s also the other ag programs, like horticulture and animal care, [which are already utilizing the property as a hands-on lab],” ACC president Dr. Ken Ingle explained. “There’s a classroom and two pole barns.”
The Bill & Nancy Covington Education Center is located at 2610 South Jim Minor Road, near Brandywyne Drive, about four miles from ACC’s main campus along Jimmie Kerr Road in Graham.
The initial plans called for the property to be developed in multiple phases, starting with the construction of a 600-square foot classroom building that Central Builders of Mebane built in 2023 as part of a grant-funded contract for about $310,000 that also included hookups to water and sewer infrastructure.
ACC officials had originally envisioned the Bill & Nancy Covington Education Center as having an agricultural science building, an animal care building, and an event barn, based on a preliminary master plan that two architectural firms had developed for ACC several years ago. The preliminary “conceptual” plan also designated a portion of the property for a garden and chicken coop, flexible crop space, and grazing areas for hands-on instruction.
Known informally as “the farm” since an anonymous donor made its development as an outdoor classroom possible in 2015, the Bill & Nancy Covington Education Center is named in honor of longtime Alamance County dairy farmer William “Bill” Covington and his wife, Nancy, both now deceased.
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ACC acquired the property in 2015 through an anonymous donation of nearly $500,000 that was specifically designated to buy the 47-acre tract on South Jim Minor Road, near Covington Dairy along N.C. Highway 119. The land had previously been used to raise replacement heifers for Covington Dairy, according to the community college.
Graham native and former high school biology teacher Ronald Petree – who initially insisted upon remaining anonymous but later reluctantly agreed to speak to The Alamance News – said at the time that he had originally planned to buy the land from Covington and donate it to ACC for the horticulture program to use for 100 years.
Instead, ACC officials convinced the donor to give the money to the ACC Foundation to purchase the land directly from Covington.
Restrictions that were placed on the donation require the 47-acre property to be used for horticultural, agricultural, and forestry instruction, or other educational purposes, until January 1, 2115, based on a gift deed governing the use of the property that was filed at the time with Alamance County’s Register of Deeds. The gift deed also prohibits any commercial or industrial development of the property for 100 years.
Hub for hands-on agricultural education
Meanwhile, ACC officials say that the Bill & Nancy Covington Education Center is “steadily becoming one of the region’s most significant hubs for hands-on agricultural education.”
“The farm” serves as a hands-on learning site for students enrolled in Sustainable Agriculture, Agribusiness, Agricultural Education, and Horticulture, as well as ACC’s Continuing Education division, which offers classes in homesteading and other skills intended to support local food production and self-sufficiency.
Today, the Bill & Nancy Covington Education Center includes: the classroom building; two pole barns for equipment storage; a two-acre “market garden”; a livestock paddock; and multiple pastures.
The farm is currently home to turkeys, laying hens, and other species of fowl. By the end of this year, meat rabbits and meat goats will join the operation. Over the next two years, cows, sheep, and pigs will be housed on the property, ACC officials told The Alamance News this week.
New livestock housing is underway, alongside construction of a greenhouse, nursery space, and an expanded market garden. Subsequent phases of development that are planned over the next five years call for the addition of: an orchard and a vineyard; test plots for specialty crops; and construction of an event barn and additional educational facilties.
Meanwhile, ACC officials say that interest is likely to grow in the college’s Veterinary Medical Technology program, which currently has an average enrollment of about 100 students each academic year, according to Snyder. The community college is currently planning a dedicated on-site laboratory where students can practice essential skills in a safe, supervised environment, he said this week.
Development of Bill & Nancy Covington Education Center primarily grant-funded
Development of the farm has continued steadily and been funded primarily by grants through the North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund Commission and the Golden LEAF Foundation, based on updates that ACC’s trustees have heard periodically over the past several years.
The Tobacco Trust Fund Commission awarded a grant for $380,550 several years ago to begin the development of hands-on training for students in ACC’s agriculture, horticulture, animal care, veterinary technology students, and several other programs, according to an annual report that the commission filed with the General Assembly’s joint legislative oversight committee on agriculture, natural, and economic resources in 2024.
Those funds were earmarked to cover the cost to design instructional lab facilities and hook onto the Orange-Alamance Water Supply, according to the commission.
The tobacco trust fund commission also announced late last year that it had awarded a $160,678 grant to ACC to fund a tobacco-style greenhouse, potting shed, storage area, livestock fencing, corral, and handling system, as well as equipment and supplies for the veterinary technology program.
