Northside Elementary, Saxapahaw Mill Honored for Stewardship

A staff and faculty of 80 at the new Northside Elementary teach nearly 500 children in the school’s three-story, almost 100,000 square-foot modern green building on Caldwell Street.

Northside Elementary School was one of three development projects honored last week in the Greater Triangle Stewardship Development Awards Program held at American Tobacco Campus in Durham.

The school in Chapel Hill’s Northside neighborhood near downtown won a Gold Stewardship Development Award, the program’s top prize.

Northside Elementary School was originally home to the African-American Orange County Training School, built in 1924, most of which had been abandoned. By redeveloping this site, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, with Timmons Group and Mosely Architects, saw an opportunity to revitalize the neighborhood while avoiding the ecological impacts that come from building on a new site, according to the judges. Careful deconstruction of the existing buildings permitted high rates of material reuse and recycling. The project enhanced a local greenway, a resource conservation area and a community garden.

The project did an outstanding job of protecting water quality through use of porous pavers, porous playgrounds, green roofs, and an underground stormwater detention basin, according to the judges. A 60,000-gallon underground cistern supplies water for toilets and a cooling tower. A second 5,000-gallon cistern irrigates the school garden. The redevelopment project preserved trees and removed invasive species.

The project recently became the first LEED Platinum elementary school in North Carolina, and is one of only four LEED Platinum elementary schools in the entire country.

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North Carolina School Boards AssociationNorthside Elementary, Saxapahaw Mill Honored for Stewardship