Overview:
• The $22 million expansion would be on Shaw Mill Road, near SteelFab’s plant on Country Club Drive
• 42 jobs, with an average annual salary of at least $66,700, would be added to the 58 already in Fayetteville
• The city council is offering a $327,487 grant to persuade SteelFab to choose Fayetteville; Cumberland County may offer another $363,550
Fayetteville is in competition with locations in Virginia and South Carolina for a $22 million expansion of the town’s SteelFab Inc. steel fabrication plant, according to city documents and county property records.
The expansion would bring 42 full-time jobs with an average pay of at least $66,700. The new employees would be added to the 58 who already work at the company’s Fayetteville location, a City Council document says. Starting pay for the lowest-paid position is expected to be $59,650.
A map presented to the city council on Monday shows the expansion is planned for 75 undeveloped acres that SteelFab owns on Shaw Mill Road.
The site is less than half a mile from SteelFab’s plant on Country Club Drive near Country Club’s intersection with Murchison Road. This is the former location of the Hercules Steel Co. plant. In October 2021, SteelFab’s Virginia division bought the Hercules plant plus some of the 75 acres being considered for the expansion, according to county property records. It bought the rest of the 75 acres in February 2022.
SteelFab’s website says the company has 15 fabrication facilities and 17 offices operating in 13 states from coast to coast.
SteelFab’s Raleigh sales office and Charlotte corporate office did not return messages that CityView left on Wednesday.
Nearly $700,000 in grants for ‘Project Superman’
Grants totaling more than $691,000 could land the project here instead of Virginia or South Carolina.
The Fayetteville City Council voted 9-0 on Monday (with Council Member Malik Davis absent) to offer SteelFab $327,487 to encourage the company to build its expansion here. The payments would be spread across five years.
“Over 10 years, at the current tax rate, the City would collect $781,239 in new revenue, retaining $453,752 after all incentives are paid,” says a slideshow presented to the city council.
A similar grant request for $363,550 is pending with the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners, said Robert Van Geons, president and CEO of the Fayetteville Cumberland County Economic Development Corporation. He expects the county commissioners to hold a public hearing on the grant request at their Oct. 6 meeting. The grant amounts are based on the city’s and county’s tax rates, he told CityView.
Van Geons on Monday presented the potential expansion to the City Council under the code name “Project Superman.”
“They often ask, ‘Where did some of these names come from?’” Van Geons told the council. “We often don’t get to pick ’em. But when we do, we try to keep it simple. As this is a steel component manufacturer — ‘Man of Steel,’ ‘Superman’ — you know you can see where that goes from there.”
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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