Home Care In Brown Summit, NC

The Guilford County Board of Commissioners is planning to sell the Monticello Community Center site at 5009 NC 150 East in Brown Summit to Greensboro Batting Center Inc – unless someone else gives the county a better offer.

The board will discuss the matter at its Thursday, Sept 1 meeting.

Guilford County has received an offer to purchase the site from Greensboro Batting Center and by law the county has to put the property out for upset bids.

The site has been well known in the community in that area. It was at one time an elementary school that was torn down several years ago. The property up for sale is just over 6.5 acres and it includes a gym, a baseball field and a gravel parking lot.

The offer from the batting center is an even $100,000.

Greensboro Batting Center, which offers baseball and softball training and related services provides sites for those purposes, opened in 1987. Over the years, the center has expanded operations in the area and has supported nationally ranked teams.

According to county staff notes presented to the county commissioners, “The offer is consistent with the value of the land. The value of the gym is difficult to determine based on needed repairs and upgrades to make it functional and code compliant. The gymnasium floor and bathrooms would need significant repair to adequately use the property and it would require an installation of proper ventilation for the gym. The parking lot would require grading and paving to meet ADA requirements and accessibility requirements for the building.”

County staff have conducted a “best use analysis” of the property and found that, given the Guilford County Parks Department’s current needs, it doesn’t make sense for the county to spend the money to fix up the gym, bring it up to code and offer it for public use.

County staff has already sought out others that might be interested in using the property but found little interest.

No one has rented the site in over a year, and, as it stands right now, Guilford County is spending about $12,000 a year to keep the property mowed and trimmed.

The purchase offer is for $100,000, with a 5 percent deposit to be paid upon the Board of Commissioners’ proposal to accept the offer.

Under North Carolina law, the county will need to publish notice of the offer and allow 10 days for upset bids.

All she wanted was a safe place to park her car out of the weather. What Lori Kittle ended up with is a carport that is more dangerous than helpful.

BROWNS SUMMIT, N.C. — Lori Kittle loves almost everything about her Browns Summit house. There is however one thing she wishes she had, a covered spot to park her car.

“It would be nice to keep it out of the rain and weather,” Kittle said.

A couple of years ago Kittle hired Tar-Hill Painting and Renovations to build a carport for her. The cost was right around $7,000 and Kittle said she was told it would be completed in a few weeks.

“When they first started it looked good, it seemed like they would do a good job,” Kittle said.

The initial frame was set up and then plywood was put up on the roof. Kittle says that’s as far as they got. The carport sat partially finished for more than two years. After several months it started to lean, and pieces of wood separated from the frame. Part of the roof was falling apart and there were holes in several spots.

“It’s awful, really bad,” Kittle said.

The two brothers that own the company would communicate with Kittle on and off according to her, but they never came back to finish the job.

“(I) feel like I’ve wasted a lot of money, it’s been so long.

Kittle, who is deaf, has apparently never even parked under the structure because she feared part of the roof or the entire structure would fall. She said people have stopped by driving down the street and warned her that the carport looks unsafe and to have it torn down before it falls and may hurt someone.

Earlier this year Kittle reached out to us in hopes of getting some help. We contacted the company and while it took several weeks before either brother called us back, we did eventually speak with both.

One of the brothers admitted they should not have taken the job. It appears the other brother accepted the work and started the job on his own. When we spoke with the brother who was doing to work, he blamed part of the delays on COVID-19 and told us that support beams he put up were knocked down or removed and that’s why the structure was leaning. Kittle denies any supports being knocked over or removed.

When we asked him if he would finish the job or provide a refund, he danced around the question continually blaming Kittle for knocking down the supports he installed.

While he was not quick to respond to any of our emails or calls asking if he was planning to finish the job or provide a refund, he eventually said he would refund some of the money. It has been three months since we initially reached out and three weeks since he said he would refund some of the money. To date, no money has been refunded and no additional work has been completed.

Kittle is hoping someone may be able to help her finish the carport or build another one. She is in the process of taking Tar-Hill Painting to court.

After his ordeal, Michael White advises families to have a fire plan with escape routes for various scenarios. He stresses families should practice the plan.

BROWNS SUMMIT, N.C. — A Brown Summit man is recovering, and his family picking up the pieces after a fire destroyed their home and everything inside. 27-year-old Michael White now moves around with the help of a walker and a brace helps to hold his torso upright. That's because he had to jump from a window to survive.

White and his mother were asleep in their home on Loblolly Court in Browns Summit when a fire broke out around 4 am on October 30th.

"I woke up and there was smoke already below my head, in the bed, " said White. His mother Linda, a substitute teacher with Guilford County Schools, was able to get out and was calling frantically for him while he was still trapped inside.

White then tried to jump out of the second-floor window to narrowly escape the fire.

"I opened the window and I put my feet through and I reached for the edge of the window but I guess I missed it and I fell and I landed bad," he said.

He was severely injured in the fall and broke his feet and fractured his spine.

"I literally crawled hands and knees in my underwear from the front porch to over there (the neighbor's lawn)."

RELATED: Mother and Adult Son Escape House Fire, Greensboro Fire Officials Say

White said he can't remember clearly the details of what he did but he looks back to that night and is amazed that things weren't worse.

"I am really lucky that I even woke up to make it out," added White.

After his ordeal, he advises families to have a fire plan with escape routes for various scenarios, which they should practice.

"Not only do you need one, you need to know which way is unlocked on your window, you need to know can you open it, is it seized, is it hard to open and could your children open the window if they need it to," urged White.

He also says to have a fire-proof safe where you can keep duplicates of your keys, id cards, and important documents, which would help in the aftermath of the fire.

Fire investigators said they could not determine the cause of the fire but say the smoke alarm was working and did go off during the fire.

White said he and his mom did not hear it.

White is out of work for now and hopes to walk without aid. He has started a Go Fund Me to help with his medical bills and recovery, which doctors tell him will take about 6 months.

The Whites are renting an apartment in the meantime because their burnt-out home will have to be demolished and then rebuilt and it may not be ready until some time next summer.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The Greensboro Batting Center has big plans for the future. The community sports group will move out of its current location and make way for some serious upgrades. They secured land to build brand-new indoor and outdoor facilities in Guilford County. While those facilities are built, they will operate out of an abandoned grocery store in Greensboro.

Earlier this month, the Greensboro Batting Center won a bid to purchase property on NC-150 in Browns Summit. The land is the former site of the Monticello Community Center, and it is right across the street from Monticello-Brown Summit Elementary.

The bidding process took several months to complete. The batting center first put in a bid in September. The price tag was $100,000. A few others tried to secure the land for themselves, extending the bidding process several weeks, but the Greensboro Batting Center came out on top. In the end, they paid $260,000.

The Greensboro Batting Center's owner, Alan Ashkinazy, said they will lease the two baseball fields next door to the property. Those are owned by the Browns Summit Youth Association. The batting center will also put in two additional baseball fields.

There is a gymnasium on the property. Ashkinazy said his team does not yet have concrete plans for the gym, but he suggested they could lease it out to a community youth basketball or volleyball organization.

The Greensboro Batting Center will also build a 30,000-square-foot indoor batting facility on the Browns Summit property.

Ashkinazy said they needed a bigger space after adding to his list of staff and services, including agility training.

"It's grown into a bunch of lessons pitching, hitting, catching, fielding," said Ashkinazy.

They have to jump through several hoops before construction can begin, including making the necessary arrangements for zoning, water infrastructure, and parking.

"The first thing we've got to do is get the fields ready out there and then once those fields are ready then we can start planning on building," explained Ashkinazy.

Ashkinazy said the indoor facility could take between 18 and 24 months to build.

While construction is underway in Browns Summit, Ashkinazy said the Greensboro Batting Center will operate on a temporary basis in the abandoned Harris Teeter on N. Church Street in Greensboro. He said the batting center secured a two-year lease on the property.

"We just needed something big, that was open and grocery stores are like that, you take out the shelves you take out everything and you got a big open space," said Ashkinazy.

The batting center will install turf and nets in the old grocery store. Once the indoor facility in Browns Summit is complete, the operation on N. Church Street will move to NC-150.

Ashkinazy said the plan is to move into the abandoned Harris Teeter in early 2023.

"You know we’re hoping to open up here February 15, that’s not set in stone, it depends on how everything goes. We’re going to start working here on Tuesday and hopefully, it goes smooth," Ashkinazy said in regard to the grocery store location.

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Guilford County Schools crowned a W-I-N-N-E-R at its spelling bee on Tuesday. Thirty students participated, but only one made it to the end.

Nam Tran is a seventh grader at Brown Summit Middle School. He won after 18 rounds of the competition.

“Well, I feel really honored for winning the spelling bee,” Nam said. “I really didn't think I would win, I just studied really hard and I tried my best."

Nam said he had to learn about 4,000 words for the competition. As for the winning word, it was "probative." The definition is having the quality or function of proving or demonstrating something.

“I learned a lot of cool words, sluggard, which is someone who is very sluggish,” Nam said. “It's a very fun word to say and I think it's one of my favorite words. With spelling, there are a lot of grammar rules and grammatical rules that you can learn. It's very fun to spell because I get to learn all those. Especially in the spelling bee, there are a lot of words from other languages, so I got to learn some grammatical rules from their languages as well."

Chloe Brim, a seventh grader at Allen Middle School, was the runner-up. Nam will move on to the regional spelling bee next in Charlotte. His parents said they couldn't be prouder.

“He's been practicing day and night very hard, anytime he has time after doing homework,” his father Trung Tran said. “I just see him sitting and just staring at the list of words and trying to learn about them.”

“As parents, we just support and encourage him in whatever he needs, but we don't put any pressure on him,” his mother Tram Truong said. “We want him to enjoy the journey, we want him to enjoy learning."

When Nam isn't studying his words, he enjoys playing piano and chess, and listening to and dancing to K-pop. He said he wants to be a civil engineer when he grows up.