By Sarah Campbell
scampbell@salisburypost.com
KANNAPOLIS — A.L. Brown High School’s Samuel B. Stroup Vocational Building now has a new name and a fresh look.
The Kannapolis City school system’s Board of Education voted unanimously Monday to change the renovated building’s name to the Samuel B. Stroup Arts Building in order to more accurately represent the classes that will be housed there.
That includes courses such as carpentry, dance, theater arts, culinary arts and studio arts.
“With a heavy arts influence, we wanted a new beginning,” said Will Crabtree, the district’s director of business operations.
The building was renovated in conjunction with the addition of the school’s STEM Academy. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering and math.
The total price tag for both projects comes in at $8.1 million, funded through Cabarrus County government.
Crabtree said construction on the building is running ahead of schedule. It is expected to be finished by Monday, despite the March 6 projected completion.
“We certainly can’t complain about that,” he said.
Although the building wasn’t completely gutted, Crabtree said “it came close.”
“We took down some walls and reconfigured the space,” he said.
Ron Deaton, director of secondary education and career and technical education for Kannapolis City Schools, gave a detailed account of the facility’s features during Monday’s school board meeting.
“It’s quite impressive,” he said.
Deaton said the portion of the building that was used for theater arts has been completely torn down and transformed into a black box theater. The entire room has been painted black, which allows for flexibility for sets from play to play.
“It’s a fairly new concept,” he said.
The school’s drama teacher, Jeremy Peterson, and band director Gordon Snyder are hoping to team up to offer a musical theatre class in the space next school year, Deaton said.
The new food labs will include four kitchen stations. Each one will accommodate about five students and include a refrigerator, stove and sink.
“They are very, very nice,” Deaton said. “These classes will be filled up.”
The building will also include a commercial kitchen that includes a meat slicer, ice machine, dishwater, convection over, range, two-door refrigerator, fiberglass buffet, salad bar, bench mixer and broiler. Students in culinary arts classes will utilize that space.
“It’s like walking into any restaurant you’ve ever been to,” Deaton said. “Everything in there is commercial and top notch.”
The school’s Navel JROTC classes will have two classrooms in the new building as well as ample storage space for equipment, uniforms, flags and additional items to outfit up to 200 cadets.
The arts classes will also benefit from extra storage space. And a kiln room has been added to fire clay creations.
The exceptional children’s department will also be housed in the building.
One room has been designed as an independent living skills center with a bedroom, living room and kitchen. Another will feature a job skills center, which will help student hone employment skills. There will also be two regular exceptional children’s classrooms.
“This is an unbelievable upgrade for the EC program at Brown,” Crabtree said.
Crabtree said the building will likely reopen to students at the beginning of March.
“There are some classes like construction that really need to move because they don’t have a good place to work,” he said. “We’ll probably try to move those classes pretty quickly and we’ll phase the other ones in.”
Contact reporter Sarah Campbell at 704-797-7683.
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Additional building highlights
What else to expect in the renovated Samuel B. Stroup Arts building at A.L. Brown High School:
• The carpentry/construction labs will feature a dust collector, SawStop table saw, Powermatic planer, Powermatic sander, bench top chisel mortiser, variable speed lathe and four work bench stations
• The dance studio will have smooth hardwood floors that are “floating.” That means the construction of the floor provides a degree of flexibility to absorb the impact of intensive dance. It will also feature a wall of floor-to-ceiling mirrors. 
• The drafting classrooms will now have six-drawer storage areas and two student drawing and drafting boards.