Chatham County tries to get ahead of development spawned by VinFast auto plant
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VinFast in NC
Vietnamese automaker VinFast announced in March 2022 that it would open an electric vehicle assembly plant in North Carolina. The battery manufacturing plant will be built in Chatham County and is expected to eventually create 7,500 jobs. It’s the largest economic development announcement in the state’s history. Here is coverage from The News & Observer about the plans.
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Chatham County leaders are seeking the public’s help in planning for the changes that the VinFast auto plant are expected to bring to the rural southeastern corner of the county.
VinFast says it will hire thousands of workers to begin producing electric SUVs in the small unincorporated community of Moncure sometime in 2025. The Vietnamese company stands to receive help from state and local governments worth more than $1 billion.
Chatham officials have long known that the 2,150-acre industrial “megasite” in Moncure could someday attract a large manufacturer. But until the VinFast announcement last year, potential changes in the area were theoretical, as the site remained as wooded and undeveloped as much of the rest of southeast Chatham County.
Now it’s clear change is coming, and the county is working to craft a vision for development in and around Moncure and identify the policies and public investments needed to bring it about. The county calls the effort Plan Moncure and hopes to complete it by the end of the summer.
Key to the plan is a survey of people who live and work in the area asking what they’d like to see preserved and changed as Moncure develops. County officials extended the deadline for answering the survey until midnight April 21. The survey can be found at www.surveymonkey.com/r/6VG3ML6.
Meanwhile, they’ve also scheduled another public meeting to answer questions about the planning process and hear people’s concerns. The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 27, at the Moncure School.
Moncure residents got a sense of what’s coming last summer when the N.C. Department of Transportation presented plans to overhaul two U.S. 1 interchanges and build new access roads to the VinFast site. The preliminary plans called for taking 27 homes and five businesses and moving a Baptist church.
Construction on the first of the interchanges, at New Elam Church Road, could begin last this summer, according to NCDOT.
Another harbinger of change: Nearby property owners have begun seeking new zoning in anticipation of development around the VinFast plant. The county says that by Nov. 30 it had received requests to rezone more than 625 nearby acres. County commissioners have decided to hold off granting rezoning requests received after Dec. 19 until the Moncure plan is completed.
For more information about Plan Moncure, go to bit.ly/3L0Mx8T.
This story was originally published April 17, 2023 at 7:00 AM.
