RICHMOND HILL ― The overflowing parking lot offered the first hint this Development Authority of Bryan County board meeting would be more than the typical 8 a.m. coffee-and-muffin roundtable.
Inside, the crowd was standing room only. Residents came to the February meeting to push back against a nickel refiner eyeing a vacant manufacturing site. Many had taken off work to be there.
During the hourlong public comment period they questioned the science, safety and long-term feasibility of the refinery. But broader exasperation with rapid growth in this Savannah suburb underscored nearly every comment.
Bryan County has been booming since the end of the Great Recession, a magnet for manufacturers of everything from vinyl products and kitchen countertops to farm equipment and assault rifles. And then there’s the largest economic development project in state history, automaker Hyundai’s electric vehicle assembly plant.
The coastal county’s population surged 71%, to 53,000, between 2010 and 2025, the fastest rate among Georgia’s 159 counties and in the top 10 nationally.
Credit, or blame, geography. Several counties around fast-expanding Savannah, the regional shipping and tourism hub, are growing quickly. Two interstates pass through Bryan County, with its bedroom community of Richmond Hill parked alongside I-95 and a largely rural area known colloquially as north Bryan flanking I-16. Once county leaders leaned into development along both those corridors, growth came at highway speeds.
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Residents are telling officials to pump the brakes. Public meetings that once drew only officials, applicants and maybe a few busybodies are now can’t-miss events livestreamed on social media via cellphones.
Elected leaders are listening. All three governmental bodies — representing the county and the municipalities of Pembroke and Richmond Hill — now oppose the nickel refinery. Local authorities also have blocked a proposed airport and are closely scrutinizing even small projects, such as a new gas station and convenience store.
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Officials recently stripped the development authority of its annual funding for the first time since it was established — although the county chairman notes the authority still has more than $12 million in available reserves to spend and generated $600,000 in net income in 2024, according to financial statements. Withholding the funding also allowed the commission to lower the county’s property tax rate for the ninth straight year.
The pushback has given rise to the notion that a county that has been the epitome of Georgia’s claim as the “best place to do business” is closed to new business.
All that development has delivered thousands of jobs, but residents today are more focused on the unintended consequences: rising home prices, bad traffic and strained public infrastructure.
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
“Development? They’re over it. Too much. Too fast,” said Corey Foreman, a community activist running for a state Senate seat against an eight-term incumbent, Savannah Republican Ben Watson. “I don’t believe our elected officials or board members have had bad intentions, they just haven’t been challenged on their thinking. Now that’s changing.”
The Hyundai ‘mixed bag’
Foreman lives in north Bryan, which pre-Hyundai had more timber tracks and crop fields than people. Then came the automaker’s nearly 3,000-acre manufacturing campus, which opened in fall 2024. The South Korean automaker has promised 8,500 jobs by the end of the decade.
North Bryan went from sleepy to slammin’ almost overnight, according to the leader of the area’s only incorporated town, Pembroke, population 2,500. Mayor Tiffany Zeigler remembers when the spicy development in Pembroke involved attracting a Mexican restaurant to its quaint and cozy downtown — all 6 square blocks of it.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Now, with Hyundai 13 miles down the road, an industrial park home to several other manufacturers and plans for several warehouse centers also nearby, the fifth-generation Bryan County resident is wrestling with how to preserve Pembroke’s small-town feel while planning for thousands of new residents.
“We knew something was coming to the site, but we didn’t realize how big,” Zeigler said. “People feared it; it was a mixed bag, you had people who were afraid of it and people who embraced it over time.”
Hyundai’s timeline — from clearing ground to making cars in a 16 million-square-foot facility in a little more than two years — exacerbated the unease. Still, residents have directed their ire at government officials, not the automaker, for the growing pains.
Hyundai officials acknowledge the disruptions caused by the factory’s early days and note that many concerns, such as traffic near the plant and water and wastewater supplies, have been addressed. A spokesperson said the automaker is committed to bringing “long-term value” to the region.
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
County Commission Chairman Carter Infinger, Bryan’s highest-ranking elected official, likens the Hyundai explosion to a dog that’s been chasing a car for most of its life and finally catches it.
“Now what?” asked Infinger, who’s held a post on the County Commission since 2011 and has led the development charge for much of his tenure. “We’d been planning and doing things in the background in anticipation of the eventuality, but now you have to ramp it up and ramp it up quick.”
An awakening in Richmond Hill
Mary Beasley moved to Richmond Hill in 2001 to escape Savannah after her home was burglarized. She worked air traffic control at the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport, right off I-95, so Richmond Hill was an easy commute and she liked the quiet subdivision near the banks of the Tivoli River.
For 25 years, she watched new subdivisions sprout like weeds in spring and lamented the absence of planning in a town with a claim to fame as the Southern home to automobile magnate Henry Ford. No central business district. Too few parks and walking trails. Just sprawl.
“If you don’t have kids who are involved in baseball or soccer or football, there’s really nothing to do,” she said.
More rooftops was the priority in the 2010s, acknowledged Infinger. Good schools and proximity to Savannah and Fort Stewart, the largest military installation east of the Mississippi, meant new homes sold faster than they could be built. Then, in 2021, came the groundbreaking for a 10,000-home community, Heartwood, that would stretch Richmond Hill’s reach south to its border with Liberty County.
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Meanwhile, the development authority was tasked with bringing jobs to Richmond Hill to encourage local high schoolers and college grads to stay in the area and start families. A countertop manufacturer (180 jobs) opened a plant in an industrial park off I-95, Belfast Commerce Center. Other employers followed, including a medical supply maker (600 jobs) and, most recently, a Hyundai supplier (1,500 jobs).
Beasley’s call to action came last year when officials announced plans to open an airport near the industrial park. The Savannah airport had run out of room to expand, creating the need for a second airport in the region that could handle private jets and other general aviation demands.
Her experience as an air traffic controller told her putting an airport so close to the bustling Savannah facility and the military runways of Fort Stewart, where drones and aircraft regularly conduct flight exercises, was unwise.
She started going to meetings and thought many officials held a “convoluted view” on development. Taxpayers want their dollars spent on amenities, infrastructure and other quality of life elements for residents of all ages, not airports, Beasley said.
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
She’s encouraged by Richmond Hill’s newly elected mayor, Kristi Cox, who hosted a “visioning retreat” in late April to reset priorities, such as turning a 51-acre, city-owned property into a city center that Richmond Hill currently lacks.
“There’s new hope for Richmond Hill,” Beasley said.
A ‘discerning’ approach to growth
Ken Copi’s house is on an unpaved road at the farthest-flung reaches of Bryan County. The dirt avenue is flanked by tidy, ranch-style homes originally built for the many members of his late wife’s family.
Driving down it, you’d never guess the development interest in it.
Copi didn’t either until he got a call from a contact at Pembroke City Hall two years ago. Come to a planning commission meeting tonight, he was told, and bring your neighbors. A developer had submitted a plan to build an 800-unit subdivision on property abutting theirs and wanted the city to annex it.
Copi mobilized his forces and “raised such a stink” the developer withdrew the application.
“That showed me right there the value of paying attention and showing up,” he said. “If we hadn’t that would have gone through and that development would have changed everything about living here.
“And there’s more developments like that one coming.”
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Copi is a retiree and a frequent public meeting attendee. He looks back over the past decade and questions the motives around growth. The unemployment rate in metro Savannah, which includes Bryan County, has hovered below 4% for much of that span, aside from a spike during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bryan doesn’t need more jobs, he said, so the only explanation for the growth focus is to add population.
“It’s growth for growth’s sake, and that’s just wrong,” he said. “Especially if it’s done quickly and outpaces your infrastructure, creating traffic and putting a strain on your water and sewer.”
That stance is shared by many of the most engaged residents. Infinger, the County Commission chair, is embracing it.
“We’re not closed for business, but we’re not open to anything and everything anymore,” he said. “We’re discerning.”
— Data journalist Jennifer Peebles contributed to this report.
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
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