🗞️ The town hits pause on data centers for six months

🗞️ Aldermen adopt the plan that guides what gets built next

🗞️ A Kernersville neighbor will lead the area's YMCA

🗞️ Bishop McGuinness is losing its athletic director after 31 years

🗞️ East Forsyth takes the Kernersville Cup

⛅ Mostly Cloudy, Stray Storm | High: 84°F | Low: 68°F

Saturday is the gray one. Mostly cloudy through the morning with a high near 84, and a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms after noon — 20 percent, with less than a tenth of an inch expected if anything falls at all. The northeast wind runs around 7 miles an hour. Overnight the low settles near 68, with that same slight chance hanging on until about midnight. Sunday is the better of the two: partly sunny, a high near 86, and the rain chance down to almost nothing. Then Monday turns the heat back up, sunny and near 91. If you are picking one weekend day for something outdoors, pick Sunday.

Before the first one shows up, the town wants to know what it would be dealing with.

The Board of Aldermen voted unanimously this week to pause the acceptance, processing and approval of zoning for new data centers and related operations in Kernersville. The moratorium took effect Wednesday and runs into late February unless the town adopts new rules before then.

Town Manager Curtis Swisher told the board that the current Unified Development Ordinance has few provisions addressing facilities like these. Some Triad-area facilities measure 100,000 to 200,000 square feet, and larger locations take up hundreds of acres and more than a million square feet. Staff will spend the pause studying water consumption, electricity usage and noise, particularly where a site would sit near homes.

Swisher was careful about how he framed it. “This may or may not be a problem,” he said, stressing that the pause is not a judgment that data centers are good or bad. He also said he is not aware of any current expressions of interest from data center developers in a Kernersville location.

Which is the whole idea. This is a town writing the rules while the room is still empty.

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The same meeting produced something bigger and a good deal quieter.

The Board of Aldermen unanimously adopted Kernersville's new Comprehensive Plan on Wednesday. It is the long-range document that guides development, transportation, infrastructure and land use in town.

Consultant Scott Goldstein was clear about what it is and what it is not. “This is not a regulatory document,” he told the board. “It's a statement of Kernersville's values, a vision for the future … and a guide for all of you as decision-makers in future projects.”

Community Development Director Catherine Garner said what residents told the town held steady across multiple rounds of engagement: preserve the small-town identity while making room for growth, improve walkability, invest in infrastructure and support local business. Traffic and overdevelopment came up again and again.

A plan is not a law. But it is the thing a board reaches for when a hard question lands on the agenda, and this week the board took up a data center question at the very same meeting.

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The new head of the area's YMCA lives right here in town.

Donna Rodgers, a Kernersville resident, has been named president and chief executive officer of the YMCA of Northwest North Carolina. According to the Kernersville News, she is the first woman to serve in that role in the association's history.

She is not new to the place. Rodgers joined the organization in 2004 as vice president and chief financial officer, and most recently served as executive vice president, chief operating officer and CFO. She has been the interim chief executive since May.

She succeeds Darryl Head, who left earlier this year after two decades to lead the YMCA of the First Coast in Jacksonville, Florida. David Zimmer, co-chair of the CEO search committee, said Rodgers “distinguished herself through her strategic vision, operational expertise, and understanding of the YMCA's opportunities ahead to serve our communities.”

“I look forward to working with our amazing staff team and volunteers to further deepen our impact in all the communities we serve,” Rodgers said.

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Thirty-one years in, and he picked the date himself.

Jeff Stoller will retire as athletic director at Bishop McGuinness High School on Feb. 19, closing out 31 years in school athletics. He has held the job since June 2002, and before that spent six years as athletic director at Oak Ridge Military Academy.

The date is not arbitrary. He timed it to the basketball conference tournament championship so the school has room to run a search and he has time to set the spring schedules before he goes.

“I just felt like it was time,” he said. “There are some things I will miss, like working with the coaches.”

The list of what arrived on his watch is long. Indoor track and field, girls' lacrosse, wrestling, fencing, girls' golf, JV football and JV baseball all started under him, along with a rubberized track, expanded bleachers and weight room upgrades. He says he wants to do something full-time next.

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There is a trophy only four schools in the world can win, and this year it went to the Eagles.

Each year the four Kernersville-area teams — East Forsyth, Glenn, Bishop McGuinness and The North Carolina Leadership Academy — play each other early in the season, and the best record takes the Kernersville Cup. East Forsyth locked it up with a 3-2 win at Bishop McGuinness on Monday and a 5-0 win over Glenn on Tuesday, after beating The NCLA 3-1 on Aug. 18.

Dylan Lopez did most of the damage against Glenn, scoring twice on penalty kicks and once from inside the box. Bryan Duran added two of his own. Goalkeeper Edson Lemus made four saves to keep the sheet clean.

The Eagles are 4-1-1 now, after a 2-0 win over Western Guilford on Wednesday, and they are doing it under a head coach in his first season. “I think the guys are starting to believe in the new system,” Garret Walker said.

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