Southwestern Community College is in the business of dreaming big as it works through the preliminary stages of a master plan to guide its development over the next five to 10 years. 

A major expansion and renovation of the Ingles grocery store on Russ Avenue in Waynesville is finally imminent.

Campus dining is headed for an upgrade at Western Carolina University, with renovation toward a new and improved Brown Building due to start this fall.

Call it a foyer, an atrium, a lobby, a cattle call — an addition is being planned for the Jackson County Justice Center to house metal detectors and lines of people waiting to pass through each morning.

Western Carolina University’s slated to get a brand new building on Centennial Drive in place of the one destroyed by fire in November 2013, which was home to businesses such as Rolling Stone Burrito, Subway and Mad Batter Bakery and Café.

The large, cavernous room at the heart of Jackson County’s Community Services Center doesn’t see much action these days. It’s no longer open to the public. A trash can sits solemnly collecting water dripping from a leak in the ceiling. 

But the room’s parquet floor still hints and harkens to better days gone by.

Waynesville Middle School is set to get a new roof, following a vote by Haywood County Commissioners to approve a project that the Haywood County School Board OK’d Sept. 8. The project will finish off a campaign against leaky roofs that Tracy Hartgrove, the school system’s maintenance director, has been championing since he arrived eight years ago. 

With a long construction process coming to an end, students and teachers at Pisgah High School are enjoying a bit more space in their building, and Haywood County Schools Maintenance Director Tracy Hartgrove is happy to be putting the final touches on a project that’s been in the works for more than two years.

The town of Sylva will not be enacting a moratorium on metal-sided buildings in its downtown area in an effort to preserve its aesthetic integrity, but an ordinance outlining such a prohibition will be explored.

Haywood County leaders have substantially lowered the asking price for the empty, run-down, old hospital — it’s now free.