Nucor Corp. re-affirmed its commitment to its new West Virginia plant Thursday when the company’s board of directors approved an additional $400 million in capital expenditures to build the mill. That takes the total investment from the initial announcement of $2.7 billion to the new estimate of $3.1 billion.
The new mill will be along W.Va. 2 and the Ohio River at the Mason County communities of Apple Grove and Mercers Bottom, about 28 miles north of downtown Huntington and 15 miles south of Point Pleasant. Some buildings on the site have been removed and temporary construction trailers moved in. The company estimates construction will require about 2,000 workers. When finished in 2025 or 2026, the plant will have 800 full-time workers producing 3 million tons of steel per year.
The plant itself will have a large economic impact on this region. What’s unknown at this time is the number of other businesses that will locate near the plant to take advantage of the steel it produces. Those could add dozens or hundreds more new jobs. And there is the potential for retail, housing and other growth along W.Va. 2 in northern Cabell County and southern Mason County.
Such growth will bring challenges to schools, infrastructure and transportation. It could be what the region needs to force something that has been neglected since the 1960s: improvements to W.Va. 2, commonly called Route 2.
While other highways in this region have been built or improved since the 1960s — U.S. 35 and Corridor G come to mind — Route 2 has been forgotten or deliberately ignored. It has crossed the line between congressional districts and legislative districts, so it has lacked the political clout of other highways. Route 2 between Huntington and Point Pleasant has often been set aside while other needs have been taken care of.
That has to change. You don’t have 800 to 2,000 people driving to and from work and all the truck traffic that comes with it on the present road that is just too narrow in some places for all that. In the 1960s, land was cleared and graded for four lanes in some places. That flat, leveled land is a reminder of what was promised but never built and of what is needed but not talked about on the grounds of the Capitol Complex.
Lawmakers and agencies at state offices in Charleston undoubtedly are occupied by the closing weeks of the regular session of the Legislature, and they could be preparing for an extended special session should lawmakers need one to take care of unfinished business. It should be noted that Cabell and Mason counties have unfinished business, too. It’s Route 2, and the time has come for state officials to reveal their plans for the road beyond repaving here and there, assuming they have any.
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