The public is invited to tour the newly rebuilt and restored Newnan High School on Sunday, July 28, following a 2:00 p.m. dedication ceremony held in the new Max Bass Athletic Complex.
Major work on the high school is being finished this week in preparation for the new school year. The July 28 dedication ceremony and open house will take place exactly three years, four months and three days after significant parts of the campus were damaged or destroyed by the EF4 tornado that struck Newnan on March 26, 2021.
“We want to invite the people of the city of Newnan and Coweta County, our families and alumni… all past, present and future Newnan Cougars… to come see this state of the art facility for themselves,” said Dr. Gamal Kemp, Principal of Newnan High.
Parking for the July 28 dedication and tours can once again be found along LaGrange Street, Armory Drive and Cougar Way, and the high school will provide golf carts for those needing lifts to the gym.
Principal Kemp and his staff and students – along with previous NHS principal Chase Puckett – have continued to hold school for 10th through 12th grade students at the 190 LaGrange Street campus since 2021, while the school system undertook the largest construction project in its history around them. For the past three years, Newnan High 9th graders attended classes at a temporary “Cougar Village” at the Central Educational Center while Newnan High was being rebuilt and restored.
Kemp says that he and his staff are excited to get into the new building and start classes, again as a unified high school with all of Newnan High’s 2,300 students at one location.
“We will all be back on our campus, and it means a lot to everyone” said Kemp. “We kept our promises to the kids, to the community… This is exactly what we wanted in a school at Newnan High School, and we’re so proud.”
“It’s like the Phoenix rising from the ashes,” said Dr. Marc Guy, a Coweta School System CCSS Assistant Superintendent and himself a NHS alumni. “It’s a great feeling to see that… hey, Newnan’s back. We really never left, but it’s back. We have our building. We have our home.”
The multi-year recovery and rebuilding of Newnan High School’s main campus has been the largest capital project in the school system’s history, with nearly a year of recovery and design work after significant damage from Coweta’s 2021 tornado disaster, followed by over two years of site preparation and construction.
Newnan High School’s distinct Lagrange Street main classroom building served students on the LaGrange Street campus since 1952. The rebuilding goal was to restore all student facilities lost in the 2021 disaster, while preserving the school’s historic significance and appearance. The project gave the school and school system the opportunity to provide current NHS students with state-of-the-art facilities which can serve students and the community for the next 70-plus years.
“This tornado and the whole experience of this, in my mind, is a vivid example of tremendous opportunity that can rise from tremendous difficulty,” says Superintendent Dr. Evan Horton, who – along with his staff and Coweta School Executive Director of Facilities Ronnie Cheek – has shepherded the recovery and rebuilding project since the March, 2021, disaster.
“I think Newnan High students and staff will be very pleased with their school, and very excited to start classes this year,” said Horton. “I think future generations are set up for tremendous opportunity and tremendous success.”
The $110 million Newnan High project was designed by Southern A&E and built by Parrish Construction, and is financed by a combination of local capital project funds, insurance funding, and state and federal emergency funding. Preliminary designs for the new NHS were unveiled in January, 2022, with site preparation beginning soon thereafter and completed that summer. Construction passed a milestone in October, 2023, when final structural steel was placed at the entrance of the school’s new auditorium. A new 61,000 square foot gym facility expanding the Max Bass Athletic Complex – expanding the restored Max Bass gym – was completed and opened in November, 2023, and replaces the old gymnasium and weight room damaged by the tornado.
The aim of the project has been to retain Newnan High School’s historic architectural aesthetic but with larger, modern and more secure facilities to replace what was lost. The new 223,500 square foot classroom building replaces the 1952 classroom building and the 1950’s-era auditorium, as well as band and chorus facilities, two center-campus classroom buildings and the school’s media center.
The building includes new classrooms, offices and a new cafeteria, which sit approximately in the same position as the old building. The new school’s media center once again sets atop the school’s main entrance on the send floor – as it originally did in the 1950’s building – overlooking LaGrange Street.
The new two-story main building includes a sub-grade bottom floor – adjoined to the school’s new 750-seat auditorium – providing large band and chorus rooms and other arts and classroom facilities. The lower floor provides a new south-facing entrance to the school and the new auditorium, opening onto additional parking. The lower area has also been built as a reinforced area that can serve as a secure storm shelter for all students and staff on campus, if ever needed.
The July 28th dedication ceremony in the new gym will feature several speakers, and will recognize the wide-ranging set of partners responsible for the rebuilding project, while also linking Newnan High’s past to the future. The ceremony will be followed by self-guided public tours throughout the afternoon.
A video preview of the new Newnan High building can be found here. More updates for the Newnan High dedication and the Coweta County School System’s new school year can be found on the system website at www.cowetaschools.net, and on the school system’s CCS-TV page on Youtube.
