Up & Coming Weekly

May 12, 2020

Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.

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WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM MAY 13-19, 2020 UCW 17 EARL VAUGHAN JR., Senior Staff Writer. COMMENTS? EarlUCWS- ports@gmail.com. 910-364-6638. Hope Mills News & Views Cumberland County Schools are shut down for the rest of the 2019- 20 year, but that hasn't prevented Jack Britt High School teacher Henrietta Jutson and student Saathvik Boompelli from working together on a project providing needed support to frontline health care workers at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center. Jutson, an integrated systems technology teacher at Britt, has access to 3-D printers used at the school. Boompelli reached out to Jutson with the idea of putting the printers to use by program- ming them to print out a clasp that would be attached to masks like those worn by healthcare workers. Unlike typical clasps that loop over the ears, the ones that Boompelli envisioned go around the back of the head, so they are more comfortable to wear for extended periods of time and don't put as much strain on the ears. Jutson has had the 3-D printers at Jack Britt since around 2015. There are a total of three of them, each roughly the size of a refrigerator you'd find in a college dormitory room. Each printer has a gantry with a filament head that features an X, Y and Z axis. Jutson said the printer head moves left and right, forward and backward. "It's like a hot glue gun,'' she said. The printers are loaded with a roll of plastic, or filament, that Jutson purchased for the project. The process is a bit time-con- suming, Boompelli said, noting that it takes about two hours to print about five of the plastic clasps. The Britt printers have produced a total of 350 of the clasps so far, which they've donated to Cape Fear Valley. Boompelli said until the hospital makes a new request for additional clasps, they are looking around to see if there are other area hospitals or frontline care workers that could use the clasps to make pro- tective masks of their own. "The clasps can be reused and other people are making masks,'' Boompelli said. "We thought we would focus on this.'' Boompelli said Jutson recently received an email from the parent of another student thanking her for providing the clasps. "It's really cool to see how it's affecting the doc- tors,'' Boompelli said. The only problem associated with the project is the plastic filament used to make the clasps isn't free and has to be purchased. Jutson is using a teacher fundraising tool to help raise money donated to cover the cost of the filament. The website is known as donorschoose.org. Visit the site and in the search space type in "Henrietta Jutson", then look for the link entitled Filament for Good. As of Monday, May 4, the project still needed $280 to help pay for the filament. Jack Britt contributes to fight against COVID-19 by EARL VAUGHAN JR. NEWS The Britt printers have produced 350 clasps so far. Hope Mills could face delay in pedestrian plan's advance by EARL VAUGHAN JR. The Town of Hope Mills recently got good news and bad regarding its Parks and Recreation Trust Fund Grant. The grant, which will help fund planning for pedestrian walkways in the central area of Hope Mills, was scheduled to be presented to the state by the McAdams group on behalf of the town ear- lier this month. The North Carolina Department of Transportation gets to pick which firm handles consulting work on the grant, and the good news for Hope Mills is it already had a longstanding relationship with McAdams. But according to town manager Melissa Adams, there's a downside to the future of developing the pedestrian plan. Because of the COVID-19 crisis, people aren't driving as much as they used to, which has cut into a lot of funding that DOT receives from sourc- es involved with travel. The bottom line is, if there's a shortfall in fund- ing this month, that could mean the planning for the Hope Mills pedestrian project could be delayed, which further means the actual start of the construction phase of the pedestrian project would also be set back. Chancer McLaughlin, who is the development and planning administrator for the town, is try- ing to maintain a positive outlook on the situation and remains hopeful there won't be a significant enough shortage of money to force the implemen- tation of the design plan to be delayed. "One of the ideas we are going to push with this plan, which I think will be groundbreaking, is to see about the facilitation of a greenway that connects the (old) golf course to Trade Street,'' McLaughlin said. Sidewalks are in the works from Town Hall on Rockfish Road to Johnson Street down to Trade Street, McLaughlin said. The greenway plan would complete a loop and link neighborhoods to the back side of the former golf course. "Now you have something more impactful from a pedestrian standpoint,'' McLaughlin said. "People can walk from the golf course to Town Hall, and from Trade Street to the lake. All through pedestrian avenues, greenways and sidewalks.'' McLaughlin stressed that the money that has already been allocated will go to funding the cre- ation of an overall plan for the proposed pedestri- an upgrade, there is no money to pay for building the new walking area itself. "Once they come up with a plan, we'll have to come up with funding for construction,'' he said. "This is strictly for design.'' While there is a potential for delay in the pedes- trian project, McLaughlin said town growth is doing well otherwise — in spite of the pandemic. The new Chick-fil-A restaurant had a successful opening recently, taking drive-through customers only, as the state's regulations designed to protect against spread of COVID-19 continue. Another opening is expected to be held in the near future as the new Biscuitville franchise has wrapped up construction. McLaughlin said he was initially informed Biscuitville was planning for a summer opening, hopefully after the COVID-19 situation improves. There has been talk the open- ing date could come earlier, but McLaughlin said he had heard nothing concrete. Otherwise, McLaughlin said town business is going well and he's gotten numerous requests for construction permits. "The staff is doing everything we can to be as innovative as we can during this pandemic, so we can keep things in some sort of normalcy until we can get back to our regular schedule,'' he said. The Hope Mills pedestrian plan could ultimately connect the old golf course to the downtown area via a greenway.

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