A proposal to rezone 123 acres on Country Club Drive near Murchison Road drew sharp pushback from residents who live beside the wooded basin and said expanding industrial activity so close to their homes could permanently alter the character of the area.
Fayetteville’s Zoning Commission, a five-member volunteer panel, considered a zoning request from SteelFab during a hearing on July 14. Concerned residents filled the conference room at City Hall and urged commissioners to consider the long‑term consequences of allowing heavy industrial uses on the site.
SteelFab wants to rezone the 123-acre property owned by Pelican Properties from its current light industrial and conservation district to heavy industrial.
SteelFab, a Charlotte‑based steel fabrication company founded in 1955, purchased Hercules Steel after more than 65 years of operation. This included production facilities on the corner of Country Club and Distribution Drive near the land SteelFab wants rezoned.
The company has 11 fabrication facilities and 15 offices in 13 states.
Two SteelFab representatives and Robert Van Geons, president and CEO of the Fayetteville Cumberland County Economic Development Corporation, spoke in favor of rezoning the 123-acre property, which is adjacent to Rose Lake. Seven spoke against it.
SteelFab’s Explanation of the Project
“We are here solely to fabricate steel,” SteelFab Operations Manager Chuck Craig told commissioners. “As far as changing this location, you know, a lot of it is self-serving, but it does do a lot for the community as well,” he said.
Craig said a couple of their previous projects include fabricating steel for the Methodist University Cape Fear School of Medicine in Fayetteville and St. Jude Hospital in Memphis.
SteelFab currently has 87 employees and hopes to have 125 employees with the expansion, at average salaries in the mid‑$60,000s, Craig said.
In October, the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners approved a $363,550 grant to SteelFab to persuade it to bring 42 jobs to Fayetteville. In September, the Fayetteville City Council awarded the company $327,487.
At the time the company reported it had 58 employees.
“They are a quality employer that provides above-average wages, benefits, and based on historic operations, current uses, and the future land use plan,” Van Geons told commissioners during the zoning hearing.
He also said the project would build on decades of industrial activity along Distribution Drive and Murchison Road, citing existing warehouses, contractors’ yards, and SteelFab’s current plant. He added that the nearest traditional frame-built home is a quarter mile away, and the nearest school is more than half a mile away.
“This rezoning would allow a homegrown North Carolina company to expand their existing operations on property that is approximately 25 feet from where this exact same work has been done for 30 years, and at the end of a street where this exact same product has been produced for more than six decades,” Van Geons said.
Jimmy Kizer, a SteelFab consultant, explained that the company’s interest in the land began with a soil investigation on the land they currently operate on. “As we did soil investigations on that, we found some of that area wouldn’t support the weight of the building because the building has big cranes laid in it to hold the beams as they’re being fabricated,” he said.
While looking for an alternative, the land SteelFab now wants to rezone “just kind of jumped out and said, ‘Hey, this would be a perfect spot for this’,” Kizer said.
SteelFab identified a graded plateau on the 123‑acre tract as the only viable location for expansion.
“It’s down, kind of in a hole. You got the buffer in the back. It kind of fits perfectly with what’s already going on around it,” he added.
Kizer said they would keep a buffer between the industrial zoning and the lake, saying that the “wetlands area, the sewer line that runs through there, all that will stay wooded.”
“There’s no construction that’ll happen back there in those areas,” he said.
Until last year, much of this area had been zoned as a mixed‑residential district before being converted to light industrial, long before the company was considering the land, Kizer said. A flyer neighbors received about SteelFab’s rezoning request, however, described the site as still being mixed residential, which sowed confusion and fueled suspicion about the scope of what the company was requesting.
“There was some misinformation on what the zoning classification was,” Kizer said.
Craig said the new building would sit in a natural depression at the back of the property, which he argued would reduce noise for nearby homes. “If we build down in this bottom, it’s going to cut down the noise that you guys are currently hearing,” he said.
The expansion would lessen employee traffic past a nearby mobile home park because workers would not drive to the current break room at the corner of Country Club and Distribution, Craig said. “Once we build this facility, there will be no more traffic as far as those guys trafficking back and forth to the break room,” he said.
Craig added that he “heard a lot of chatter that there was a data center going to go on this site. That is absolutely not going to happen.”
SteelFab calls itself “the nation’s premier fabricator of data center projects” with 28 in North Carolina alone. Data centers have ignited controversy in Fayetteville and Cumberland County.
After being pressed by commissioners, Craig said SteelFab’s request was more to keep from getting into any “gray areas.” He cited language in the Unified Development Ordinance—the city’s zoning and land‑use rulebook—that does not spell out what long‑term storage means in light industrial versus heavy industrial zoning.
“Just to eliminate that question or that argument later on, we just decided we would try,” he said.
Opponents Concerned About Heavy Industrial Zoning
Neighbors who opposed the request focused less on SteelFab’s current proposal and more on the long‑term implications of changing the land’s designation from light industrial to heavy industrial. Several speakers emphasized that zoning “runs with the land,” not with any particular owner or project. Once the property is zoned heavy industrial, they argued, SteelFab—or any future owner—could pursue any use allowed in that district without additional public review.
Tisha Waddell, a former member of the Fayetteville City Council who lives near the site, urged commissioners to consider conditional zoning tied to SteelFab’s specific site plan.
“If anything happens between now and SteelFab actually acquiring that land, you’ve now made it possible for anything to happen on that land,” she said.
Other residents raised environmental, flooding, and equity concerns. Michael Brown, whose property backs up to the lakebed, described the basin as a working environmental corridor.
“The creek and wetlands provide habitats for many different species of animals,” he said adding “I love them all.”
“Vacant does not mean without value,” he added. “This land is always working every day.”
Brown also questioned the lack of publicly available studies on traffic, stormwater, wildlife, lighting, and long‑term impacts. “Complying with regulation is not the same as demonstrating that there will be no significant impacts,” he said.
Resident Lena Simmons placed the case in a broader pattern of placing high‑impact uses near working‑class and Black neighborhoods along Murchison Road.
“Traditionally, when they have put garbage dumps and trash heaps and polluters, they put polluters in people of color’s neighborhoods and working‑class people’s neighborhoods because it’s easy and they do not get resistance,” she said.
Zoning Commission Votes on SteelFab Rezoning
After deliberation, commissioners voted 4–1 to recommend rezoning only the portion of the 123 acres SteelFab intends to build on, rather than the entire tract. Commissioners Kevin Hight, Zaccheaus Eley, Toenya Monds, and Philip Fehler supported the narrower rezone; Roger Shah opposed.
Eley asked whether SteelFab could “etch out” only the needed area and leave the rest alone.
“From operations from SteelFab’s perspective, that is a possibility,” Kizer responded.
Hight said miscommunication had fueled tension. “If the people had just talked… miscommunications and rumors could have been quelched,” he said.
After the meeting, Waddell told CityView that both the public and the commission were asked to evaluate the application using “incomplete or inaccurate” information.
“Many residents have legitimate concerns about a straight heavy industrial rezoning, particularly given the city’s recent discussions about permitting AI data centers by right within the HI district,” she said.
She urged the City Council to review whether the UDO’s current language is creating unnecessary conflicts and to ensure zoning information is presented accurately to advisory boards and the public.
After the meeting, SteelFab did not seem phased by the decision.
“It doesn’t impact what we’re doing. We’re still doing what we’re doing,” he told CityView.
Asked if they plan to lobby the City Council to rezone the entire piece of land, Craid said he was “not sure how we’re going to pursue that. We may go for the whole parcel. We may just seek a change to the language in the UDO or get clarification there, and leave it zoned as is.”
The Zoning Commission’s recommendation now moves to the Fayetteville City Council, which will hold a public hearing before taking a final vote on the rezoning.
Government reporter Rachel Heimann Mercader can be reached at rheimann@cityviewnc.com or 910-988-8045.
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