Ground was officially broken last Wednesday at the FEMA safe room site also known as the Dome Project on the campus of Fayetteville High School.

Local, state and federal officials were on site for what was called “a historic day for the Fayetteville City School System.”

Mark Clark, chairman of the Fayetteville City School Board, first acknowledged Director of Schools Eric Jones for his “tremendous leadership, innovation, dedication to detail and his perseverance on the project.”

During the groundbreaking ceremony, Clark took attendees back to 2019 when Jones was the principal of Fayetteville High School and Eddie Keys was the athletic director. He said Jones and Keys knew how badly FHS needed a suitable gym, but they also knew how expensive a new gym was going to be. “And that Christmas break, they spent a lot of time right here on Tiger Hill researching, searching the internet for grant possibilities,” Clark said. “It was during that time they discovered what was being done by school systems in other states using hazard mitigation grants to build multi-use facilities.”

According to Clark, it was also during that time when Jones and Keys stumbled across Carrie Cochran with the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA). They spent days on the phone asking her questions and gaining insights and information they needed. Clark said they secured the grant application which was due on Dec. 31, 2019; the grant was submitted on Dec. 23, 2019.

“… Thank you, Eddie, and thank you, Eric,” Clark said. “We literally would not be here today if it weren’t for your determination, for your hard work and for your willingness to sacrifice Christmas break of 2019 for a greater cause.”

Clark said for many reasons, the past six years and four months have been, “as the Beatles sang, ‘a long and winding road,’” adding, “today, we are right where we dreamed we would be breaking ground on a much -needed gym for our Tigers and able to give back to our community a much-needed tornado safe room.”

“This project we break ground on today is truly a win for this entire community,” Clark said.

Having served in various elected positions in Fayetteville for the past 32 years, Clark shared a few perspectives about the community’s efforts in hazard mitigation and public safety. “I’ll summarize it at first by saying our community has been at the forefront of disaster preparedness for over 30 years,” he said.

He referred to the multiple 500-year floods of the 1990s that were “devastating to families and businesses and overall public safety.” He said, in response, Lincoln County partnered with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), TEMA and other agencies on multiple projects intended to save lives and property and to reduce the cost of emergency relief.

“The efforts they initiated in the ‘90s included our community’s first hazard mitigation plan, our first emergency management standard operating procedures, a sheltering program for individuals and families, a water gauge on the Elk River that notified when floods were headed this way, along with a flood notification system that literally calls individual families and businesses and warns them, a countywide dual electrical power source, six electric generators for Fayetteville’s water supply system, six generators for Lincoln County’s water supply system. And — perhaps most relevant for today — in the early 1990s, the Fayetteville Rotary Club initiated a project, provided the initial seed money and partnered with the city and county governments to install a network of tornado warning sirens across our community — five sirens in the city limits, five sirens outside the city,” Clark said. “Everyone to this day is reminded of that tornado warning network when those sirens are tested promptly at noon every Wednesday.”

Clark said in November 1997, the City of Fayetteville received a grant from TEMA under the hazard mitigation program to facilitate the purchase of 40 homes in Fayetteville’s flood plain. He said the concept was to provide hazard relief for those families who had suffered the brunt of those 500-year floods and to transform those flood areas along Thornton Taylor Parkway and South Lincoln Avenue. He said the result is “what our community enjoys today at Stone Bridge Park and the Farmers Market.”

According to Clark, in 1999, the community became Tennessee’s first recipient of Project Impact, a national effort intended to reduce the cost of natural disasters. The community received FEMA’s first Project Impact Star Community award for the southeast, certifying the community was ahead of other communities across the eight-state region in the southeastern United States.

“As you see, our community has been very proactive over the years in public safety, disaster preparedness, but without question, this tornado safe room will be the biggest step forward in public safety in our community in a generation,” Clark said. “Our existing tornado warning siren network provides necessary, reliable warnings of impending danger, but, honestly, other than basements and bathtubs, many people in our community have nowhere to be truly safe during a tornado. This tornado safe room will provide that protection for over 3,000 people.”

Clark said when some ask why Fayetteville needs a tornado safe room, he asks them to consider March 24, 2023, when the National Weather Service (NWS) confirmed an EF2 tornado touched down in Fayetteville after forming and touching down near Amana Avenue, a quarter mile from where the tornado safe room will be constructed. He also talked about May 8, 2024, when the NWS confirmed 10 tornadoes in Lincoln County. Five were in the city limits of Fayetteville and winds were clocked at 105 mph. He said on May 20, 2025, Lincoln County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) officials took videos and photos of a storm passing their facility on Wilson Parkway, less than a mile from where the groundbreaking took place on Wednesday. Clark also talked about April 28, 2014 — 12 years ago last week — when an EF3 tornado hit South Lincoln School. He said, according to the Tennessee Risk Management Trust, 75% of the school was a total loss. “Fortunately, that storm hit that school after school hours, so no lives were lost inside the school,” Clark said. “However, that night, tornadoes caused what the Lincoln County Sheriff later called ‘mass destruction in Lincoln County,’ injuring seven people and claiming the lives of two.”

Clark asked, “Does anyone seriously believe tornadoes will be less likely in the future than they have been in the past?”

“I’ve repeatedly mentioned how our community has been at the forefront of disaster preparedness over the years and again today, Fayetteville leads the way,” Clark said. “This monolithic dome safe room will be the first of its kind in the state of Tennessee. Obviously, we hope it will be a showplace for other communities to come visit to understand how they can save lives in their communities across the state of Tennessee.”

Clark said the school system is thankful for the support of a number of TEMA officials during the grant process. Shannon Ball, the hazard mitigation officer for the State of Tennessee, was unable to make the ceremony due to a surgery. He sent a note that read, “I have been in public service for more than 30 years. Projects like these really do give Tennesseans a level of safety that is unmatched. This will be the first monolithic dome safe room in the state and I hope other communities will use this as a blueprint to protect their citizens during severe weather. I’m excited to see the finished project.”

Clark said, “The mission of the Fayetteville City School System is to provide a safe, encouraging environment for the academic success of our students and their journeys to college and career readiness. Projects like this tornado safe room make it possible for us to meet the needs of students and at the same time give to this community. We are pleased and honored to seize this opportunity. We’re so excited to think that our school system and this community will reap the benefits of this project for many, many decades to come. So to our local, state and federal colleagues, thank you for your partnership on this project … On behalf of the Board of Education, our wish is may this facility and may this campus be a place of togetherness, of competition, of celebration and of safety for our entire community.”

TEMA Mitigation Specialist Kari Cochran said a lot of hours went into the project. “You guys should be very proud of yourselves for making this happen,” she said. “You will be setting the standard in Tennessee for these safe rooms … This is going to be a tremendous asset for your community. You will have a lot of people want to come and see this after it is open. You will have many school representatives from across the state wanting to come and see this because this is going to be the biggest thing that we have had in a very long time.” She said TEMA “very much looks forward” to watching the project succeed and can’t wait for day that the doors open. “I will never regret the number of hours that has been spent on this project,” Cochran said. “It is going to be amazing and I hope you all know how great this going to be for your community and how great it’s going to be for the rest of state because you are going to be showing them how we can get it done and how you can make this look beautiful and efficient …” JBHM Architecture Principal Brandon Bishop said the firm is thankful to be part of the project.

He said it a 38,000 square foot, two-story building that will protect more than 3,200 people as a shelter and will have more than 1,200 seats as a competition gymnasium.

“We are proud for how far we’ve come and proud for where we’re going,” Bishop said before saying a blessing over the construction, over the City of Fayetteville and the Fayetteville City School System.

Dason Maloney, president of Century Construction, said, “We’re humbled, we’re excited and we’re thankful to be here.” He said tornado safe rooms are “very near and dear to our hearts at Century.” When he was in high school, he said his dad – who was also his boss — put him a charge of an important project. A tornado had leveled the high school in Smithville, Mississippi, and the company had received the call to help with cleanup and reconstruction. Maloney said he was put in charge of brick reclamation, which is a “nice name” for taking the brick out of the rubble and cleaning and stacking it so it could be reused on the new high school. “It was humbling what a storm could do to a community like that,” he said, adding, they were thankful to be a part of the reconstruction.

Maloney said they built a tornado safe room dome like the one being built in Fayetteville. He said the best part about the structure is they are concrete and not brick. “We have been blessed to be able to build these structures throughout Mississippi and the southeast,” Maloney said. “… It is so humbling and exciting to see what it can do for a community.” He said Century first bid the project in 2022 and bid it again a few years later. “You have a fantastic leadership team and board … who really stuck with it and made it happen for your community,” he said. “… We’re here with you. We’re here for the long haul and we’re not leaving until you have a facility that will keep your children safe.”

The project manager for Broaddus & Associates, Gregg Kennedy, said as his Papa used to say, “What a glorious day this is.” Kennedy was the mayor of Smithville, Mississippi, during the tornado outbreak of 2011. He said an EF5 tornado “completely wiped us off the map.”

“The worst thing about it was the loss of life,” he said. “We had to build — right quick — an old shed to make a temporary morgue to put people that I loved and knew very well — my neighbors. We had to store their bodies there in that temporary morgue because nobody could get into town because of the destruction.” Kennedy said he knew from then on out that communities have to have something that safely promotes life and property during a severe weather event.

In 2020, Kennedy was in Lake Charles, Louisiana, on another cleanup at Calcasieu Parish School when he said Jones and Keys called him. “… That’s when we started and we’ve been working on it ever since,” he said. “… Today is a symbol of hard work and perseverance, patience and just an overall team effort in getting this project off the ground. I’m just so proud to be a part of this project, bringing the first monolithic dome to the state of Tennessee. We have these in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and some in Northern Florida, but this will mark the first in the state of Tennessee.”

Kennedy said when the sirens go off he is looking for a place to go. “This old boy’s looking for a place,” he said. “I don’t care what town I’m in, I’m looking for a place. I’ve had to dig out of the rubble. I know what it’s like.” He said the new facility will serve a number of purposes not only for the school, but for the community and he called it a “very unique and important milestone.”

Members of the Fayetteville City Schools Board of Education, including Clark, Jennifer Murdock, Pamela Bryson, Bridgett Hopkins, Shawnta Fulton and Kayla Camp, and all the other special guests then grabbed shovels, put on hard hats and broke ground on the multi-million dollar project.