By Elisabeth Strillacci

EAST SPENCER — The city has applied for a $25 million federal grant to help pay for a new interchange on Interstate 85 that has been in the works for years, and leaders are asking for help from residents both in town and across the county.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grant program provides grants for surface transportation infrastructure projects with significant local or regional impact. The eligibility requirements of BUILD allow project sponsors, including state and local governments, counties, tribal governments, transit agencies and port authorities, to pursue multi-modal and multi-jurisdictional projects that are more difficult to fund through other grant programs.

The BUILD program, previously known as the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) and Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) discretionary grants, was established under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and operated under annual appropriations acts until authorized in November 2021.

Applications had to be submitted by the end of January for consideration, and there is a total of $150 million available for grants in 2025. The smallest grant is $5 million, and $25 million is the highest amount available.

“We need people from across the county to write letters expressing the importance of East Spencer getting a new interchange from I-85 that would connect Choate Road to East Spencer and this end of Rowan County,” said Town Manager Michael Douglas. “Not only will it help East Spencer, which has been economically suppressed for years because it is cut off, but it will help open up this entire end of Rowan County. So we’re hoping for support from more than just East Spencer residents.”

A new interchange would not only make access to East Spencer and Dan Nicholas Park easier, it would give trucks easier on and off access to the highway, as East Spencer is beginning to not just court, but get commercial developments. It will also give more direct access to developments on High Rock Lake, said Douglas.

The interchange has been under discussion since at least 2019, with Rowan County commissioners behind the project, but acknowledging even then it would take time.

“It just really marks a lot of the boxes that DOT is interested in in a project, it really does,” said Rowan County Commission Chairman Greg Edds in 2020. “If we could put a new interchange there we could have direct access, a road to Bringle Ferry Road and High Rock Lake at that end instead of having to come off Highway 52, but then it would also service East Spencer and really give East Spencer an opportunity for rebirth.”

The new interchange would be about a mile from substantial new development off of exit 79, and Mayor Barbara Mallett said the town has, over the years, “done all the planning and preparation for this.”

Douglas said there has been “no opposition” to the idea at all, and that currently, U.S. Congressman Addison McDowell is behind the project as well.

“We are beyond grateful for the Congressman’s support,”said Douglas. McDowell serves on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and has offered to take any and all letters of support to the BUILD meeting.

“If people can just express the importance of this interchange to both East Spencer and this whole end of Rowan County, that would be great,” said Douglas. “It would be good to thank the Congressman as well, but if anyone wants to write and is unsure of what to say or how to phrase it, we have a letter on our town’s website that they can print out and sign, to make it easy.”

Writers can find the link here or by visiting eastspencer.gov.

“We’ve already received 25 letters, separate and apart from officials from the town, the DOT, the state, in support of this project, but we are hoping for many more,” said Douglas.

They can also email letters to townmanager@eastspencer.gov or mail it to the East Spencer Town Hall at PO Box 339, East Spencer NC, 28039.