Southwestern Community College is gearing up to start work on a $17 million health sciences building, with its trustees last week spending hours listening to pitches from four different companies before selecting the firm LS3P to design the project.

Dr. Kristen Hammett had just left the current Haywood County Animal Shelter when she appeared before the Haywood County Board of Commissioners Sept. 6, clad in her familiar teal T-shirt emblazoned with the Friends of the Haywood County Animal Shelter logo.

• Affordable housing issues on Haywood County’s horizon
• Habitat houses give people hope
• Old hospital’s rehab into low-income housing falls flat
• Affordable housing development looks for resources
• Self-build program empowers low-income families
• Some look to downsized housing for personal freedom, financial security

With fall classes newly underway, 420 Western Carolina University students are settling into their rooms in brand new Noble Hall, a $29.3 million building that the university just completed. 

Many rumors were put to rest Monday night as Ingles Market representatives laid out the plan for its newest grocery store in Franklin.

For more than 50 years, Mountain Projects has been known for helping the most vulnerable in the community, but with a resolution passed by the Haywood County Board of Commissioners on June 20, they’ll be helping themselves — and the county.

The Franklin Board of Aldermen has yet to agree on what it should do with a 13-acre tract it owns just off East Main Street, but two proposals from the public are leaning toward utilizing the green space for public recreational purposes.

With the N.C. Connect bond passed, Western Carolina University is moving forward with plans to bring a $110 million natural sciences building from vision to reality.

A little-known contract crafted in 1980 will take center stage in coming months as Haywood County school officials and county leaders sort out who owes who what if the school system gets the boot from its central office location.

Haywood County School officials could be ousted from their central office by early spring 2017 to make way for an affordable housing project.