A private academy in Burlington is about to embark on an eight-figure expansion where students will be equally at home wearing stage makeup or sporting their game faces.
The Burlington School plans to erect this 30,000-square-foot venue on its campus at 1615 Greenwood Terrace in order to accommodate both athletics and fine arts in a single location.
This prospective addition isn’t the first time that The Burlington School has expanded its footprint since its emerged roughly 13 years ago as the successor to two other private schools in Alamance County.
In 2018, the private academy completed a 20,000-square-foot “upper school” that has enabled it to house all of its students at its main campus along Greenwood Terrace. Then in 2023, the school obtained $6 million in revenue bonds to build an eight-classroom addition that has also served as a connection between the upper school and the academy’s original digs.
The Burlington School intends to rely on revenue bonds once again in its current gambit to build a gymnasium and fine arts facility. To this end, the school’s leaders have asked a public authority in Wisconsin to issue a bond package with a face value of $12.5 million.
As a prelude to this bond issue, federal tax law required The Burlington School to present its plans at a public hearing before Alamance County’s board of commissioners. It fulfilled this obligation on Monday when Jeff Poley, an attorney for The Burlington School, made a perfunctory appearance before the county’s governing board.
“This is somewhat a ministerial public hearing, and in no way is the county or its taxpayers liable for any of the bonds.”
– The Burlington School’s attorney Jeff Poley
“This is somewhat a ministerial public hearing,” Poley went on to explain when he got to the podium that evening, “and in no way is the county or its taxpayers liable for any of the bonds.”
The commissioners went on to give a unanimous nod to a resolution that spells out The Burlington School’s plans for the revenue from the proposed bond issue. According to this resolution, the funds will toward the construction of a “30,000-square-foot gymnasium, athletic, and fine arts facility,” with any leftover proceeds to be used for parking, landscaping, and other improvements to the academy’s campus.
Monday’s hearing drew nary a peep from the public about the proposed bond issue, which won’t saddle the county with any new obligations, financial or otherwise. The commissioners went on to vote 5-to-0 in favor of the associated resolution.
Later that evening, the commissioners went behind closed doors for about 35 minutes to discuss the potential expansion or relocation of an unspecified company with representatives from the local chamber of commerce, which serves as the county’s contractor for economic development.
Under North Carolina’s Open Meetings Law, local government boards are permitted to hold closed session to discuss corporate developments and to consider any taxpayer-funded “incentives” to bring these projects to their neck of the woods.
Neither the commissioners nor the chamber’s director would confirm if the huddle on Monday concerned the same project that drew Burlington’s city council into its own closed session last Tuesday. The council’s closed-door discussion, which also concerned various unrelated legal matters, ran for the better part of an hour.
