Construction crews have pushed the new Durham School of the Arts campus to roughly 60 percent completion, but the long-awaited move out of the school's century-old downtown building has slipped again, with district officials now targeting a fall 2028 opening instead of 2027. The new facility sits at the corner of Stadium Drive and Duke Homestead Road, about two miles from the current downtown campus, and will cost more than $200 million.
A district spokesperson told CBS17 that construction continues with site activities advancing alongside the 60 percent completion mark, with work now including exterior facades, building systems, and interior finishes. The new 368,000-square-foot facility is designed to relieve traffic congestion and accommodate more students, with plans calling for music rooms, a concert hall, and an auditorium alongside its visual and performing arts classrooms.
For students like Sydney Greenlee, who will be a senior when the new classrooms open, the timeline is a source of mixed feelings. She said learning she will leave the downtown building just as the new school opens is annoying, according to the station's report. Meanwhile, Durham Public Schools says the existing facility remains safe for students in its current state, even as the building shows its age.
A Building Showing Its Age
The downtown campus is more than a century old, and problems have piled up inside it. The building has asbestos in its floor tiles, walls partially covered with lead paint, and a roof that leaks constantly, per the same account. Angela Duran said she witnessed flooding and room evacuations at the existing campus, and said she wants a more inviting environment for families and children.
The downtown site originally opened in 1923 as Central High School, later renamed Durham High School, built on Brodie Duke's former estate with Neoclassical Revival architecture designed by Milburn & Heister, according to the Museum of Durham History. The campus became Durham School of the Arts in 1995 following the city-county school merger. What becomes of the historic 15-acre downtown site once students relocate remains an open question, one raised by Preservation Durham.
Why the Price Tag Nearly Doubled
Durham Public Schools officials have said the new facility is both more cost-effective than sticking with the existing plan and better equipped for modern learning. But getting to that conclusion took years of debate. Durham County voters approved a $423.5 million school bond referendum in November 2022 that included initial funding for relocating Durham School of the Arts, as INDY Week reported at the time.
Early estimates pegged the new campus at between $108 million and $120 million, but post-pandemic inflation and construction cost increases pushed that figure to between $240 million and $256 million, INDY Week has reported. Durham families pushed the school district to pause the new-school plan in 2024 as those costs mounted, and the escalating price tag forced the district to defer planned renovations at Holt, Bethesda, Club Boulevard, and Mangum elementary schools that had also been included in the 2022 bond.
A facility study presented to the Durham Board of Education in July 2024 ultimately settled the debate. It found that renovating the downtown campus would cost more than $269 million — and had previously been estimated as high as $371 million — due to hazardous material abatement, structural overhauls, and other deficiencies, according to Southpoint Access. That analysis also found the downtown site has on-site vehicle queueing space for only 13 cars, far short of the 137 to 179 vehicles recommended by the state transportation department, even as more than 1,000 students arrive there daily by private vehicle.
Bigger Campus, District-Wide Lottery
The new 54-acre site will expand enrollment capacity to 2,000 students in grades 6 through 12, up from roughly 1,655 students currently spread across eight separate buildings downtown, per Southpoint Access. Because admission to Durham School of the Arts runs entirely through a district-wide, non-geographic lottery, the relocation affects families across all of Durham County rather than a single neighborhood.
Durham Public Schools broke ground on the new campus in 2024, with commercial contractors Monteith Construction and Balfour Beatty handling construction as a joint venture. Hoodline previously reported on the official groundbreaking and the project's initial cost estimates. The City of Durham has also budgeted more than $530,000 in municipal capital funds for traffic signal and school zone flasher construction along Stadium Drive to prepare for the new campus's opening.
