File talk:Broughton State Hospital (1).JPG

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With a long tradition of providing essential services to North Carolina and its citizens, Broughton Hospital is prepared for a new era of accomplishments when finally settled into new facilities a few hundred yards from its original buildings. Currently expected to be occupied in the spring of 2019, the project has been delayed twenty-two times and is now seven years behind schedule. Once completed, the present day Broughton Hospital buildings will be repurposed for other uses. In 2016 a department in the UNC School of Government issued its report entitled “Reimagining Broughton: A Reuse Study of Historic Broughton Campus.” As this activity attracted attention from the City of Morganton, Burke County and Western Piedmont Community College, the N.C. Department of Commerce was asked to update the “Broughton District Master Plan” as a multi-agency effort to coordinate public investments, as well as site control, in order to attract private investment. In between these developments another project began on adjacent School for the Deaf property—a western N.C. School of Science and Mathematics to complement the original two-year residential high school located in Durham. NCSSM-Morganton is scheduled for completion in 2021. Goodwin Hall is currently on its way toward renovation while three other Deaf School buildings will be repurposed along with the addition of several new NCSSM buildings. A groundbreaking ceremony is planned for June 21, 2019, and the Barn Raising Campaign is underway to raise $3 million in private donations. NCSSM has published a monthly newsletter, “The Road to Morganton,” during the past two years. As expected, these events produced a reent update to the DFI proposal and the Broughton District master plan for the nearly 800 acres of state-owned property. This ”re-envisioned” proposal could be completed in phases over a 10-year period. The first phase of this updated master plan includes two sites which offer an opportunity for near-term private investment in underutilized public property: 1) Burkemont Avenue Hotel on WPCC’s property; 2) Silo Ridge as historic barns adjacent to new residential development; and 3) stabilize and “mothball” key historic structures anticipated to be redeveloped later. Eventually, construction begins on a Hunting Creek greenway and a regional Discovery Center museum to focus on local cultural and natural history, including a showcase of the regions fine arts. With all of this happening around the old Broughton Hospital and the new, one can only guess what the future holds for this hospital in its continuing, outstanding service to some of the most needy people in North Carolina.