Chatham EDC launches website for CAM megasite

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SILER CITY — The Chatham Economic Development Corporation has released a new website to exhibit the Chatham-Siler City Advanced Manufacturing (CAM) Site, a 1,802-acre industrial megasite in western Chatham County.

After more than 12 years of development, the location’s infrastructure is nearly complete, and CAM is ready to welcome future tenants.

“The CAM site is in a high state of readiness at this time,” said Tim Booras, the president of the Freedom Beverage Company and owner of the CAM site. “The only thing we lack is sewer. Sewer right-of-way has been acquired; engineering is done. We still have some work to do on the connector road, but no other work aside from road and field maintenance needs to be done at this time. From our end, there is not much more we can do.”

The site’s long-awaited unveiling comes at an inopportune time, though, as Chatham County continues to grapple with the novel coronavirus pandemic. While COVID-19 restrictions did not protract CAM’s development timeline, they have forced “prospective projects to go on hold,” Booras said. Companies which might already have begun the site selection process were deterred by the advent of COVID-19 and its soporific effect on industry.

CAM site developers and the CEDC hope a newly designed website will help to address that problem.

“The new website is modern and easy for users to navigate and research relevant information,” said Alyssa Byrd, the president of the CEDC. “With current conditions, websites are more powerful than ever for marketing and information delivery.”

The CAM site’s completion promises to be a defining moment for Chatham County’s economic health. Although the N.C. Dept. of Commerce ranks Chatham among the most affluent counties in North Carolina, its evaluation is skewed by narrow pockets of wealth in the county’s northeastern communities, the News + Record reported in March. Siler City, home of the CAM site, and the county’s largest municipality, would rank 98th out of North Carolina’s 100 counties in median household income if it was a county in and of itself. The megasite will flush Chatham County with thousands of new jobs and infuse its poorer areas with vitalizing industry.

Booras says his team and the CEDC are not discriminatory about the types of companies that move into the CAM site. Options include battery manufacturers, recycling facilities, food processors, distribution centers and tire companies, among others. Any company that brings with it a profusion of jobs is acceptable.

“The whole purpose of this is jobs,” Booras said. “If the county approves a project, we can’t be too picky as long as we bring a project that can provide thousands of jobs and transform Siler City, the county and the state. I don’t get involved in any of the projects that are looking to build here. What I care about is, ‘How many jobs do they bring?’”

To learn more about the industrial site, and to view the new website, visit www.chathamadvancedmanufacturing.com.