Montreat College begins site preparation for 89-acre Black Mountain cybersecurity center

Montreat College began grading and site preparation in February 2026 on its 89-acre Black Mountain campus, work the college says will continue through 2026 and into early 2027 as the first phase of a multi-phase master plan to build a regional cybersecurity complex. The initial phase prepares the site for the Carolina Cyber Center, with college leaders expressing hope that construction will begin in 2027 and the building could open in fall 2028.

The planned cybersecurity building will house Montreat’s Business and cybersecurity academic units and host the Carolina Cyber Center focused on workforce development and providing cybersecurity services for businesses, Sara Baughman, Montreat’s vice president of marketing and communications, said. Baughman described the phase now underway as intended to prepare the site for that regional facility, and she said the tentative timeline for the building to be complete is fall of 2028.

Site planning locates the new entrance and construction staging on Blue Ridge Road, where the master plan maps an access drive running east along the southern edge of the railroad tracks, then winding south and west toward the academic and cyber complex and adjacent parking lot. Baughman said all construction traffic will use the Blue Ridge Road entrance and that no construction traffic will use Vance Avenue, calling the new entrance “the first major step toward rerouting college traffic” away from the Vance Avenue neighborhood and saying the change “will bring long-term relief to nearby residents.”

Montreat’s planning documents place the Black Mountain parcel between Interstate 40 and U.S. 70, with the Vance Avenue residential neighborhood to the east and the Swannanoa River, Black Mountain Veterans Park and Blue Ridge Road to the west. The college bought the parcel in 2001; the Black Mountain campus totals 89 acres while Montreat’s main campus measures 43 acres, roughly seven miles apart by the college’s own materials.

Funding for the Black Mountain project has drawn scrutiny as well as support. Local reporting cites roughly $38 million in state funding connected to the project since 2018, and state appropriations tied to the effort include $2 million in 2018 and $20 million in 2019, with a separately referenced $8 million capital and infrastructure grant. State-level reporting records that only $27,000 of that $8 million had been billed for an access road as of its accounting, and that more than $365,000 was paid to architectural firms, a law firm and Niles Bolton Associates for master planning and a fly-through video. Ager, a Democrat who supported the funding, said, “These are all troubling expenditures to me, and if true, a betrayal of the trust I had in Dr. Maurer.”

Town-level review and community debate have accompanied the project: Black Mountain Town Council hearings on rezoning in November 2023 and May 2024 included sustained discussion about construction and future campus traffic, and the rezoning request was ultimately approved. Valley Echo planning notes and college materials also flag an NCDOT project planned for Blue Ridge Road that would add an exit from I-40 and create two traffic circles, which the college lists as a potential factor in future access.

The Black Mountain parcel already contains Abbott Hall, used for Outdoor Recreation Studies and two classrooms, an Athletics Administration Building and sports fields for soccer, lacrosse, softball, track and cross country, plus the IntheOaks estate the college is restoring. Montreat has said it hopes to have initial roads, sitework and infrastructure completed by March 2027; grading and preparation that began in February 2026 will close sections of the property to the public as that work proceeds. The project’s timetable and state funding allocations make the site a focal point for regional workforce development aims and for ongoing scrutiny over how state dollars and local land-use decisions interact.