Experts: Proposed titanium plant would offer widespread economic boost for Fayetteville

If American Titanium Metal LLC builds its proposed $1.3 billion titanium reclamation plant in Fayetteville — with 300-plus jobs and average pay at $120,000 — an economic boost will spread through the community, several experts told CityView.

As of 2022, the median household income in Cumberland County was $55,551, according to Data USA.

“To have jobs that are averaging double that, is really a game-changer for our economy,” said commercial real estate agent Patrick Murray of Grant-Murray Real Estate. “It’s going to have such a massive impact on residential construction, office development, retail development. So it will have a lot of other positive impacts. That’s going to spur growth in probably every sector of our economy here.”

Some of the economic effects that Murray and others expect:

• The plant would need services from locally operated businesses, generating additional employment in the Fayetteville area.
• The workers will need housing, and many would likely seek single-family homes. This would spur home construction in and near the northeast side of Fayetteville, where the plant is proposed to be built.
• The families of the workers will need and want goods and services, fostering locally operated retail stores, restaurants and other businesses to serve them.

“Using modest estimates, I would estimate one additional job in the local economy for every two jobs at the plant,” economist Mike Walden of North Carolina State University said in an email to CityView. “These jobs occur at firms that would provide supplies to the plant as well as from the new spending from the salaries of the new jobs.

“I would also modestly expect another $400 of new local economic activity for every $1,000 of production at the plant,” Walden said. “Be mindful, these are estimates based on the limited information available.”

Details of the factory

Information about American Titanium Metal and this project has been limited.

According to public notices and previous comments from local officials:

• The company is considering other locations in North Carolina and in other states.
• The proposed site in Cumberland County is 120 acres near the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. factory on Ramsey Street north of the Fayetteville city limits.
• The plant in its first phase would invest $895 million in the project and hire 300 people by 2028 with an average salary of $120,000.
• It could later expand to more than 400 people, possibly as many as 450, and the project’s value would exceed $1 billion.

To persuade the company to come to Fayetteville, the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners in May authorized $1.3 billion in bonds for the project. American Titanium Metal would borrow this money through the county, and the company, but not the county taxpayers, would be responsible for the debt. Much of this debt would be in the form of tax-exempt bonds for the lenders.

Further, the Fayetteville City Council and Cumberland County Commissioners each voted in May to buy the land for the plant site and give it to the company. They agreed to spend a combined $1.07 million to extend water and sewer utilities to the plant. And each would issue grants to rebate up to 85% of the property taxes levied on the plant back to the company, over 20 years. The rebates are contingent on the company achieving investment and hiring milestones with the plant.

What happens if the plant opens here?

Real estate agent Wendy Harris of Team Harris Real Estate said the salaries are high enough that the workers will be able to buy new homes here.

“It’s almost impossible to build a single-family home under $400,000, $450,000 right now,” she said. Land, labor and supplies have gotten so expensive that it’s hard for builders to make money with lower-priced housing, she said.

“A lot of the new construction is around that price, and up,” Harris said. “To be honest, you’ve got to be earning $120,000 a year to be able to afford a house like that.”

Houses in that price range may be built to cater to the titanium plant workers, she said.

Local businesses will step up to provide services to the plant and the plant workers’ families, Murray said.

Three hundred jobs with an average pay of $120,000 represent an annual infusion of $36 million into the Cumberland County economy. At 400 jobs, that’s $48 million.

That doesn’t include any local spending the company would make for goods and services.

“The biggest benefit is just the amount of money that’s coming into our market,” Murray said. “This one company is likely to have a lot of other vendors that would follow behind it. So if they’re creating 300 to 400 jobs, there’s likely to be hundreds of other jobs that are created because of this, in support of that company.

“And then you have all the job growth that’s going to come from the additional retail development, the additional office [development] to support the growth of the community,” Murray said. “So yeah, just kind of a domino effect of growth that’s going to spur more development in the economy.”

The titanium plant could draw other large employers, Murray said.

“It typically does — that kind of solidifies in other manufacturers’ minds that they have the workforce and utility access and the drive community leaders to get these type of projects off the ground,” he said. “So the more businesses like this that we win, it’s just going to create kind of a lot of inertia that’s going to drive more growth for us in other industries.”

Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.

This story was made possible by contributions to CityView News Fund, a 501c3 charitable organization committed to an informed democracy.