Eric Andrews discusses the new entrance coming to Northwood High School that Chatham Park is adding. Mosaic and a new apartment building are coming to the intersection as well. There’s also a new high school coming to the Seaforth Road area near Jordan Lake.
Speaker 1: What’s going on near Northwood High School in 2019?
Speaker 2: Well, whether or not it’ll get done in 2019, I don’t know. So anyone that’s ever had a… I taught at Northwood for six years. I coached there for 16 years. Both my kids, my son’s graduating there this year and my daughter right now as a sophomore there. And anybody knows that it is a cluster of you know what, to get in there and to get out of there. So it’s just a horrible, horrible traffic pattern, and unfortunately there’s been some accidents at that intersection as well. And so Chatham Park is doing a shopping center across the street from Northwood called Mosaic. It’s going to have a hotel, a gym, movie theater, grocery store. So there’s going to be a lot of good things coming in right across the street from Northwood High School. However, that’s going to have even more of an impact on the traffic pattern and so the town has said, “Well, if you’re going to have that kind of impact on 15501, Northwood needs another entrance.”
And so we’re going to have more of a circular loop in and out of Northwood. Not only that, everybody thinks that road going into Northwood is a private road. It’s actually a public road, and to the left of that road, they’re going to be building an apartment complex. So there’s even going to be more traffic on the Northwood Road, 15501, 64 Bypass, because of the shopping center. And so this way you can see it being built right now. It’s on the other side of what used to be the Bass Hits, the Olden property. They’re going to be coming in and out of that way, so it should help quite a bit with traffic flow. The other thing that’s happening right now, people might not realize is on Seaforth Road, there’s a new high school going in. So right by the lake, right across the street from Big Woods Road on 64, maybe a half mile, mile down on the right a new high school is being constructed right now. So that is going to be one of four high schools in Chatham County.
Chatham right now, excuse me, Northwood right now is a three A school. It’ll probably knock both the schools down to one A or two A, but when that C four school opens up, that ought to help quite a bit with the traffic, because I mean, they are filled to the gills right now. My daughter was complaining about in the cafeteria. There are kids that are having to stand right now while they’re eating their lunch, because there’s not enough seating. And those kids are starting to eat lunch at like 11:20. And then the kids aren’t even starting their last lunch until like 1:10 or 1:15. So I think it’s a little ridiculous to have lunch that early, when you just got into school. And then it’s certainly ridiculous to wait that long, but the schools just has so much in the cafeteria. They can only process so much of the same at one given time or whatever.
So hopefully you’ll see that new roadway I’ve heard it could be done at the end of this year, which would be really good. And I believe the new high school is going to be opening up the next year or two.
