Home Care In Brown Summit, NC

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)."

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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.

Parents of kids attending Brown Summit Middle School in Guilford County have some concerns with the way transportation will work this school year.

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GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. —

Students in the Guilford County School District will soon be heading back to the classroom.

Parents of kids attending Brown Summit Middle School have some concerns with the way transportation will work this year.

One parent told WXII it could be the deciding factor in whether or not he switches schools completely.

"You're telling parents three weeks before school starts that you can't transport our kids," Noel Pabon, who has a daughter enrolled at Brown Summit, said. "I guarantee parents will say, 'I want my child to go somewhere else then.'"

Pabon's daughter plans to attend Brown Summit as a sixth grader. However, an email from Guilford County Schools to parents last week has Pabon rethinking things.

"My daughter is excited to go to Brown Summit," Pabon said. "But now, I may have to tell them, 'Listen, you can't go because there's no bus transportation for you.'"

The email from Guilford County Schools says that any newly accepted students to Brown Summit will need to utilize community stops, meaning there won't be any home or neighborhood stops made. Instead, parents will have to choose a designated community stop.

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"I bought my first house this spring based off of my kid going to Brown Summit next year," Pabon said. "It's closer than where we were living, and it's on a main street — which means bus transportation will be easy — all of this was in the spring. Then, we get an email last Friday telling us that in three weeks, when school starts, there is no transportation unless we get our children to a community stop, which is essentially another school."

The closest community stop for Pabon is about three miles south at Dudley High School.

"My child would have to walk on their own which, for a sixth grader, I'm not going to do," Pabon said. "Especially a sixth grader on the spectrum."

As a working parent who can't really contribute to carpooling due to his schedule, Pabon said he wishes he had known about these changes prior to enrolling.

"This should've been figured out in the springtime," Pabon said. "Budget, no budget, whatever the cause may be-- this should've been told to us when we were applying, not three weeks before school."

Parents who use community stops will need to complete a transportation preference form.

The Guilford County School District says the community stops were implemented last year to align with the school's new bell schedule and accommodate after-school activities.

The district says more community stops were added this year because students who attend Brown Summit, a districtwide magnet school, come from as far away as High Point.

The district says it strives to be efficient with taxpayer dollars and provide safe and reliable transportation for all students.

The district is finalizing community stops and will share those with families next week.

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Construction has begun on a 500,000 square foot industrial spec building at a Triad industrial campus.

SL Industrial Partners, a division of the Silverman Group, based in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, is developing the spec building at Reedy Fork Logistics Center on Summit Avenue in Browns Summit. Jordan Quinn, Spencer Yorke and Natalie Ceva of JLL are managing marketing and leasing efforts.

JLL said delivery of the spec is expected in fourth quarter 2022. SL Industrial Partners is also developing an 800,000 SF facility at Reedy Fork that is fully leased and expected for delivery in third quarter 2022.

“Reedy Fork Logistics Center creates the opportunity for large-scale logistics users to take advantage of high-quality, speculative space in Greensboro’s rapidly growing industrial market,” said JLL’s Quinn. “The pandemic has accelerated the demand for large blocks of well-located distribution space, and with the sector showing no signs of slowing down, we’re confident that Reedy Fork Logistics Center will be a top choice for prospective tenants looking to expand or establish an East Coast footprint.”

The campus, located off U.S. 29, will take advantage stage of soon-to-be-completed infrastructure improvements, including the U.S. 29 interchange and the Greensboro Urban Loop. The location is also near Roy Carroll's South Rockingham Industrial Park, where a 250,000 SF facility is near completion for Ontex and a 176,000 SF spec is under construction.

Silverman also bought land this year to develop two industrial buildings totaling more than 1.9 million SF in China Grove in Rowan County. The group also bought Family Dollar headquarters in Matthews for $10.5 million this year and rebranded it as Eastside Logistics Center.

Silverman oversees industrial leasing and development projects throughout the United States. SL Industrial Partners currently owns and manages 20 million square feet of industrial product across 20 states.

SL Industrial partners is developing another 12 million square feet of new product across eight states, including both build-to-suit and spec facilities in Greensboro, Charlotte, Atlanta, Charleston, South Carolina, and South Florida.

“Given the increase in demand and leasing activity, we’re committed to identifying industrial development opportunities in emerging markets like Greensboro that are equipped with excellent regional access and a talented labor pool,” said Toby Nelson, vice president of leasing for SL Industrial Partners. “JLL has a demonstrated track record in the market, and we’re confident that its team has the skills and experience needed to effectively market the strategic advantages at Reedy Fork Logistics Center.”