SOCIAL CIRCLE, Ga. — Vertical construction is expected to begin shortly before the end of the year at the Rivian electric vehicle manufacturing plant at Stanton Springs in the edge of Social Circle, according to information from Tuesday’s meeting of the Joint Development Authority of Jasper, Morgan, Newton and Walton Counties (JDA).
While vertical construction has yet to begin at the Rivian site, signs at both entrances to the acreage off U.S. Highway 278 north of Interstate 20 announce the coming manufacturing plant, announcing “Rivian/Building the future together./Right here in Georgia.”
A short distance beyond the gravel road marking the facility entrance just east of East Hightower Trail, a set of construction trailers can be seen, and large trucks move regularly into and out of the site. Work on needed utilities is well underway on the acreage.
According to discussion at Tuesday’s JDA meeting, at least some of the plans for the Rivian plant have already been reviewed by Walton County officials.
On a related note, the JDA on Tuesday voted unanimously to turn its own review of plans for the Rivian facility over to Thomas & Hutton, an engineering firm with offices across the southeastern United States providing a range of services from site development to environmental services to land planning to economic development.
Thomas & Hutton works regularly with the JDA, and will do the plans review work for the Rivian project for a projected $50,000, the authority learned Tuesday. Half of that funding will come from JDA resources, with the other half from grant revenue.
Retaining Thomas & Hutton for the work will remove the JDA from a situation in which its legal counsel had been slated to do the review work, a job for which its counsel is ill-equipped, according to Monroe attorney Andrea Gray, who provides legal services to the JDA.
“You were paying an attorney, now you’re paying an engineer for the same work, and to do a better job,” Gray told JDA members Tuesday.
According to Gray, Thomas & Hutton’s work on behalf of the authority regarding Rivian will entail simply checking plans for any potential “red flags,” and won’t involve any new planning work for the Rivian plant.
Ground was broken for the Rivian plant in September, with current plans calling for the Stanton Springs facility to begin producing Rivian’s R2 mid-size SUV in 2028.
The R2 currently is projected to sell for slightly less than $60,000, with a $45,000 version anticipated at some point during the production run. The Rivian R1, the full-size SUV now sold by the company, is priced at slightly less than $80,000.
Beyond the R2, the Rivian facility now under development at Stanton Springs also is slated at some point to produce the brand’s R3, a midsize crossover vehicle expected to carry a starting price of around $37,000.
Tuesday’s JDA meeting also included a brief discussion of the $6.6 billion federal Department of Energy loan received by the company in the waning days of the administration of President Joe Biden. The company is expected to begin drawing down the loan sometime before construction of the Stanton Springs facility is completed and vehicle production begins.
According to information from Tuesday’s meeting, the JDA will have to pay some legal fees associated with the loan, a fact that came as a surprise to some JDA members.
