SILER CITY — Mountaire Farms is seeking to purchase additional property on Raleigh Street to expand parking for its facility while still seeking a resolution from the town to permanently close East Third Street in front of its plant in Siler City.
Mountaire, the Delaware-based poultry processing company, built the processing plant on East Third at the sight on the former Townsend Chicken processing plant. Across the street, the company constructed a wastewater pre-treatment facility and a parking lot.
At Monday’s Siler City Board of Commissioners meeting, the board approved a re-zoning request for the approximately 34 acres of land across Raleigh Street Mountaire is seeking to purchase, which would allow the company to construct an additional parking area to support the plant and its more than 1,200 employees.
During the discussions, commissioners raised concerns about whether the increase in traffic would require changes to Raleigh Street to accommodate. Though they unanimously approved the zoning change, the board requested that Siler City Planning Director Jack Meadows contact the N.C. Dept. of Transportation, which maintains the road. Some potential changes the board discussed included a center turning lane and/or additional lanes for ingress and egress at both the parking lots.
Later in the meeting, the board continued discussions about Mountaire’s request to permanently close East Third Street in front of the plant. The current request also includes closing a portion of Fifth Street and all of Johnson Avenue. Instead of traffic entering and exiting Eleventh Street (U.S. Hwy. 64) on East Third, traffic would be diverted to North Avenue. This would include not only regular traffic heading into downtown, but a portion of Mountaire’s trucking fleet as well.
An initial traffic impact analysis was conducted early in the year-long process of negotiations between Mountaire and the town. On Monday, the board requested the company conduct a new traffic impact analysis that would include the impacts from its parking lot expansion plan. In addition, the board requested the staff investigate whether the Chatham County Economic Development Corporation would conduct an economic impact analysis for businesses on East Third Street and the surrounding area may be affected by the closure.
The board also instructed staff to create a resolution to close the portions of East Third Street, East Fifth Street and Johnson Avenue. The resolution, which may be voted upon at a later date, would only trigger a public hearing and does not mean the board is leaning toward the closure. In the meantime, the board requested staff create public input sessions for residents and businesses to learn about Mountaire’s plans for the closure and traffic diversion.
According to Siler City Town Manager Roy Lynch, this would include clear maps as well as representatives of all those who have conducted the analyses to be available to answer questions and concerns.
No timeline for those public input sessions has been determined.
Casey Mann can be reached at CaseyMann@Chathamnr.com.