VinFast pledges to help relocate church threatened by a new road to its NC factory
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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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As VinFast prepares to break ground on its $4 billion electric vehicle factory in southeast Chatham County, the automaker has offered to help the congregation of a church that stands to lose its longtime home to the project.
The corner lot where Merry Oaks Baptist Church has stood for 135 years is in the path of a new road the N.C. Department of Transportation plans to build to the plant. The road would provide direct access to the 1,800-acre VinFast site from U.S. 1, a four-lane divided highway.
VinFast announced this week that it will donate up to 3 acres of its site to the church where it could relocate the existing building or build a new one.
“VinFast cares deeply about our new home and does not want to see the Merry Oaks congregation displaced,” Van Anh Nguyen, head of VinFast U.S. manufacturing, said in a written statement. “In addition to donating the land, VinFast is willing to work with our partners to identify other resources to help support the relocation of the church. Our hope is that Merry Oaks Baptist Church and its congregation can remain in the community.”
Church members welcome the offer but don’t know yet what will become of it.
The donated land, off Christian Chapel Church Road, is a little more than 2 miles from the church’s home at the corner of Old U.S. 1 and New Elam Church Road, said member Sharron Bouquin. The congregation hasn’t yet explored what it would take to move the 135-year-old building or build a new one, Bouquin said.
In addition, the church hasn’t received an offer from NCDOT to buy its existing property.
“At this point, VinFast has offered us an option, which we greatly appreciate. But we are early in the process,” Bouquin said in an interview. “We don’t know the money we will be getting. Everything is unknown and it’s new.”
Based in Vietnam, VinFast says it plans to produce up to 150,000 electric vehicles a year at its Moncure factory, its first in the United States. It also says it will produce vehicle batteries in a second phase, eventually employing 7,500 people in what is now a rural corner of Chatham County.
Roads are part of big incentive package
To persuade VinFast to build its factory in Chatham, the county and the state offered the company $1.25 billion in tax and other incentives. That included about $250 million for road and rail improvements in and around the site, which is now reached by two-lane country roads.
A year ago, NCDOT unveiled plans to relocate, widen and extend New Elam Church Road to the VinFast property and build a new interchange to replace existing Exit 84 at Old U.S. 1. NCDOT said at the time it would begin acquiring property last fall and start construction early this year.
After the VinFast plant opens and the company meets some of its employment goals, NCDOT would rebuild the interchange at Exit 81 and turn two-lane Pea Ridge Road into a four-lane divided thoroughfare that also leads into the site.
It has taken NCDOT longer than expected to obtain environmental permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality. The department now expects to begin acquiring land it needs for the first interchange and access road later this summer, in hopes of starting construction this winter.
Merry Oaks Baptist Church is one of several properties that would be taken to create the new interchanges and roads; NCDOT’s preliminary plans last year showed 27 homes and five businesses would also need to move.
Merry Oaks has a small but active congregation. In addition to Sunday school and morning service, the church also holds services on Sunday and Wednesday evenings, said Bouquin, who has been a member all her 60 years.
The congregation would like to remain where it is. Beyond that, it hasn’t settled on a path forward, Bouquin said.
“It’s early discussions as to what’s possible,” she said. “Would we like to preserve the look of the 135-year-old church? Absolutely. Do we know reality and what’s possible yet? This is early stages.”
This story was originally published July 26, 2023 at 3:07 PM with the headline "VinFast pledges to help relocate church threatened by a new road to its NC factory."
