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Residents fear the near-constant noise and traffic from new warehousing operations in Chatham County, Ga.
Credit: From video provided by Don't Box Us In
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Savannah warehouse expansions prompt concerns from Chatham County landowners
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LISTEN: Residents fear they are losing the rural and residential character of many parts of Southeast Georgia as warehousing tied to explosive growth the Port of Savannah brings sudden and unwelcome changes.
Some residents in Southeast Georgia are pushing back against a tidal wave of new warehouses — all being driven by massive growth at the Port of Savannah.
The latest warehouse news came last week when a Texas-based logistics company, Plastic Express, announced plans to build an $80 million plastics shipping hub.
The facility would be the size of 15 football fields with room for 7,200 container spots in an area just west of Savannah that once was considered rural.
It’s the first employer to locate in the new Rockingham Farms Industrial Park.
Laura Mackey lives nearby on a farm that her family has owned for more than 90 years.
Her family’s land, Red Gate Farms, now offers “charming countryside camping” and wedding event facilities, among other pastoral and quiet activities.
She says that over the past three years, local officials quickly have changed the area around her from residential-agricultural to industrial.
“They keep re-zoning and re-zoning when we don’t have the infrastructure to take care of it,” Mackey said. “So it’s just another Atlanta. It’s absolutely another Atlanta coming.”
She fears the near-constant noise and truck traffic that comes with warehousing — as well as the loss of land that has been kept within area families for generations.
She and her neighbors have banded together under the name “Don’t Box Us In,” one of several community groups in the Savannah area that have sprung up in response to the warehouse expansions.
“This is about the 550 people that live on Buckhalter Road and Gerard Avenue,” Mackey said. “A lot of these people were left five acre tracts. And that’s a lot to somebody who that’s all they have left from what their great-great-grandmother left to them.”
Local and state officials tout the jobs that are created by the warehouses and the growing port-related economy in Southeast Georgia.
The Port of Savannah handled 5.4 million container units of imports and exports in the 2023 fiscal year that ended June 30, according to the Georgia Ports Authority.
Plastic Express promises to create 200 jobs on what local officials describe as the largest undeveloped tract in Chatham County zoned for manufacturing.
“This latest announcement underlines the strength of the logistics corridor moving exports from U.S. inland markets through Georgia to global destinations,” said Griff Lynch, GPA’s President and CEO.
It will be the company’s second logistics facility in the Savannah area.
Plastic Express already operates in Pooler.
“They [Plastic Express] have been and will continue to be a great partner,” said Savannah Economic Development Authority President and CEO Trip Tollison.
Activists like Mackey worry there’s no regional authority keeping track of the full scope of industrial growth in the Savannah area.
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