After more than 20 years of wood chopping and log sawing and award winning, the Haywood Community College Lumberjacks — the school’s timbersports team — will soon gain a permanent home. 

“The current practice facility is back where the old mill used to be, and it’s probably just as old as that was, late ‘60s,” said Matt Heimburg, dean of arts, sciences and natural resources at HCC. “It has a tin roof and a few logs somehow holding it up. So it’s long overdue for them to get a new practice space, for sure.”

Many have probably passed by the Triangle Club on Miller Street in Waynesville without realizing what it was, but those within the recovery community are familiar with the space and know what an impact the clubhouse has in the county. 

With a site plan approved unanimously by the Waynesville Planning Board, Haywood Habitat for Humanity is getting ready to embark on its second major affordable housing development. 

Work will soon begin on renovations to the Community Services Building in Sylva — which houses the Jackson County Health Department — following commissioners’ unanimous vote April 16 to accept a bid on the project from Western Builders of Sylva and approve a project ordinance. 

Despite proposed increases in nearly every major budget category, Haywood Community College is proposing a substantial new facility that could be hard to fund — and even harder not to fund. 

The Town of Waynesville and Haywood County both got a spot of good news last week when it was announced that the building that was originally the county’s hospital would advance to the next stage in potential redevelopment. 

Jackson County is facing a plethora of capital projects over the next several years, and a new animal shelter will be one of them following a consensus that emerged from a four-hour budget planning meeting Feb. 21.

The longstanding brouhaha over a makeshift dwelling near Frog Level has escalated to the point where enforcement action is likely in the coming days. 

During the protracted approval process of a proposed development that would bring around 200 new apartments to a 41-acre parcel of land near Waynesville’s Walmart, opponents threw everything but the kitchen sink at the project — everything, that is, except for the possibility of Cherokee cultural artifacts on the property. 

It’s likely to be another tough budget year as Macon County commissioners are faced with a growing list of capital and security improvement needs, increased health care costs and stagnant property values.