The Hawfields community is like a lot of sleepy little hamlets across North Carolina.
There are fields and barns and a dairy farm that can smell a little bit if you get too close. There is a Hawfields General Store and a Hawfields Presbyterian Church with a long history. You can mingle with the family of two former governors.
These communities have stayed the same for years and, for most, big changes may never come. But most of these little communities don’t sit on eight lanes of interstate highway caught between two creeping metropolitan areas. And that, some people in Hawfields say, is why the area is bound to change.
A consortium of government and private industry is assembling a land package to offer to a big manufacturer. It could bring millions of dollars of investment to Alamance County and hundreds if not thousands of jobs. But it also could alter one of the county’s most beautiful places forever.
“I wish it wasn’t happening. But the real world keeps turning,” said Henderson Scott, a member of that famous family and a Hawfields resident. “I would like for it to remain a nice, sleepy Hawfields community.”
Scott’s brother and children have optioned land to Southern Region Industrial Realty, a subsidiary of Norfolk Southern Railway Corp. He has not.
Though he would like for the area to stay the same, he knows it’s bound to change. State leaders have identified it as one of the best pieces of developable land left in North Carolina and have tried to move industry in before.
That’s the attitude that the leaders of Hawfields Presbyterian Church took when they voted recently to swap some land with Southern Region Industrial Realty. The church traded land along the back of its property so a rail easement could be established that would run to the rail line north of the interstate. In exchange, church members got more land than they gave up in a location that would provide a buffer between the sanctuary and the tracks.
The Rev. Curtis Fussell of Hawfields said his members figured that big industrial or residential development was coming to the area. By dealing now they could keep the growth several hundred yards from the church. Still, some members spoke against the idea.
“There are a lot of people that don’t want development,” Fussell said. “But the way we’re sitting on the interstate, just like the rest of Alamance County, it’s going to happen.”
An option has been purchased on up to 1,400 acres in the Hawfields area, which sits between Mebane and Graham on the south side of Interstate 85/40. Much of the land is in Graham’s extraterritorial jurisdiction.
No buyer has been found for the land, said Sonny Wilburn, president of the Alamance County Area Chamber of Commerce.
It’s the last large area along the double interstate in Alamance County that hasn’t been developed, making it an attractive area. Two interstate interchanges are nearby, as is a community college and a solid workforce. Two international airports are an hour away. Graham, Mebane and Haw River are close enough to provide utilities
Sam Kiser has optioned his 10.5 acres for $25,000 an acre but doesn’t know if anything will happen. He optioned his land before, in 1998, to Duke Power.
He knows that development would be good for the area. But he doesn’t like to think about the impact, especially on wildlife. Kiser routinely sees coyotes, foxes and deer in the creek behind his home.
“I think probably it’s just a matter of time before someone latches onto this area and turns it into some kind of industrial area,” Kiser said.
