[NOTE: This is adjacent to the 17+ acre contaminated Brownfield site purchased by a Pennsylvania Concrete company that plans to build a concrete plant and trucking/train transport facility on the site].
TONIGHT, MONDAY, August 18, 2025, the Greensboro Zoning Commission will hear a request to rezone 5009 Mackay Road – which sits in the middle of a highly contaminated and hazardous Brownfield parcel – to RESIDENTIAL MULTI-FAMILY HOUSING. The “Agenda” is HERE:
The extensive contamination that has existed since the 1980s on the Fortress Wood Products parcel (shown in blue on the map below) is discussed HERE, with links to hundreds of pages of NCDEQ soil and groundwater reports. The contamination dates back to the 1980s and extends to the boarded-up NCNB/NationsBank building across from the Harris Teeter MacKay Road entrance (at 5013 MacKay Rd). [At a later date, some drycleaning solvents were found at the nearby drycleaning shop near an outside entrance, but the solvents were said to be unrelated to the Fortress contamination]:
The 3.15-acre 5009 MACKAY ROAD PARCEL, which is up for the rezoning request, is also for sale. There is nothing on the deed or plat suggesting that tests for TCE, hexavalent chromium, and other compounds (found in the soil and groundwater surrounding this site) have been conducted.
The site map below shows monitoring wells installed along the property boundary line between the bank property and 5009 MACKAY ROAD. A 2011 Environmental Assessment for Fortress shows that the bank property was listed as an “Inactive Hazardous Site and Pollutant-Only Site with confirmed groundwater contamination by metals.”
The environmental engineers stated on page 113 of their report that when they reached out to Guilford County to obtain more information on the bank contamination, they were provided with results from when the property was first tested, and it showed concentrations of:
The yellow circle on the map below is the area in which engineers identified “Hazardous Substance Disposal Sites:”
The 17.62-acre surrounding Fortress Wood Products parcel is currently for sale, zoned as “light industrial.” This site recently became eligible for “BROWNFIELD re-use,” subject to more soil and groundwater testing – it’s the parcel in which a New Jersey-based concrete company has expressed interest.
In a separate contaminated-property project, a developer is trying to build multi-family housing (400+ units) on the razed contaminated Brownfield site at WENDOVER and GUILFORD COLLEGE Roads:
