Work is underway on what is expected to be one of the largest economic projects to come to Hall County in recent decades.
The Blue Ridge Connector is currently being built on a more-than-100-acre site on White Sulphur Road in the northeast part of the county. The inland port will see freight brought by rail on the Norfolk Southern rail line to the site, where it can then be picked up by trucks and transported via Ga. 365 to Atlanta and points north.
The project is currently scheduled to begin operation in 2026.
Wesley Barrell, general manager of inland operations for the Georiga Ports Authority, said most of the work going on now is moving dirt to make way for later stages of the construction.
"We've started through the land-clearing phase. We've moved from taking down some of the table from where the trees have started to be removed," Barrell said. "That's going to take the process through to probably Q3 this year, so it's going to be heavily involved with dirt work until that point, and then compacting and building up of the facility."
Barrell said, so far, weather has not impacted work at the site, despite one of the wettest winters in years in the Gainesville area.
He added that Hall County will be in charge of re-routing White Sulphur Road to accommodate the entrance to the new facility, and he said work on that is likely to start before the end of the year.
"It should work in around the same time frame, around Q3, where they really start moving some of the entrance point," Barrell said. "The timeline has not been established from the county as of yet, but once we move through some more of these milestones, that's where the community will be able to see some of the improvements to the entrance of the terminal."
Barrell said while the Blue Ridge Connector is expected to have major economic impacts for the state of Georgia and much of the Southeast, it is also expected to have a major impact on the economies of Gainesville and Hall County.
"These inland terminals become an economic engine...It can be the catalyst to be able to bring new business and also complement existing business within a region," Barrell said. "Being able to remove that long haul for trucks throughout the state, makes them very large savings for being able to bring freight into a corridor."
To hear more from Wesley Barrell about the Blue Ridge Connector project, click play on the video above.
