Newton County: A Spirit of Collaboration

In September 2025, electric vehicle maker Rivian finally broke ground on its future manufacturing facility in Stanton Springs, an industrial park just south of Interstate 20 in Newton County. Expected to create 7,500 jobs by 2030, the multibillion-dollar facility is on track to begin vehicle production in 2028. With Gov. Brian Kemp on hand, Rivian CEO and Founder R.J. Scaringe told the crowd, “This is a big day for Rivian and a big day for Georgia.”

It was also a big day for Newton County.

Located around 35 miles east of Downtown Atlanta on I-20, Newton County is accessed by half a dozen exits off the interstate, with Covington’s picturesque town square located less than two miles off Exit 90. Considered a bedroom community not long ago, the county’s population grew 24.7% from 2010 to 2025, higher than the national average. Approximately 125,000 people currently call Newton County home, and that number is expected to rise. They will be part of Newton County’s burst of economic growth.

Securing Resources: Debbie Harper, president of the Newton County Chamber of Commerce, at Covington Town Center. Photo credit: Eric Sun

Aircraft manufacturing company Archer – which opened its $118 million manufacturing facility adjacent to Covington Municipal Airport in December 2024 – said it will bring 1,000 jobs to the county between now and 2032.

Then there are the data centers. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, completed the second phase of its hyperscale data center in 2023.

In January 2024, Amazon Data Services Inc. paid $36 million for 430 acres of land along I-20 in Covington. Though local officials have deflected questions about the site, it’s widely believed Amazon plans to build a data center on the property.

Massive Investment: Rendering of Meta Newton Data Center. Photo credit: Meta

In January 2025, a Development of Regional Impact filing by a subsidiary of Atlanta-based real estate and investment firm TPA Group detailed a proposed 317-acre, nine-building data center campus, dubbed Newton County Technology Park. At a rezoning hearing before the Social Circle Planning Commission in April, a representative for TPA Group told the planning group that construction would begin in 2028 and be completed by 2033, according to reporting by The Covington News.

Data centers create fewer permanent jobs than manufacturing plants. (The Data Center Coalition suggests that jobs created by data centers range from dozens to hundreds of jobs.) However, during the construction phase, up to 1,500 workers are needed, including site developers, construction workers, electricians and HVAC technicians, according to a 2025 study by McKinsey & Company.

The job creation comes with a cost, in a greater burden on local infrastructure such as electricity and water. According to testimony before the Georgia House Special Committee on Resource Management earlier this year, Georgia has 97 operating data centers with another 19 announced. Those current and planned data centers would require 14,000 megawatts of electricity and roughly 27 billion gallons of water annually – equivalent to the total annual water consumption of cities like Augusta or Savannah.

In late 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy released a report on U.S. data center use estimating that “data center load growth” tripled over the past decade and is projected to double or triple again by 2030.

Archer Opens: City and regional officials join Archer Aviation at the ribbon-cutting for the company’s new manufacturing facility in Covington. Photo credit: Contributed

Mike Hopkins, executive director of the Newton County Water and Sewerage Authority, is focusing on its use of water. In 2024, the Water and Sewage Authority, Newton County Water Resources and the city of Covington released a report analyzing the current and future water needs for the area through 2075. “We’ve got to be sure that when we’re talking to these industries and to large-tract home builders that we have enough water and wastewater capacity to serve them,” says Hopkins. “We can’t do something and then come up short. It’s just not acceptable.”

The authority recently completed a tunnel under I-20 outfitted with pipes and fiber that will service the Rivian site. It’s also adding water reuse infrastructure adjacent to the Georgia BioScience Training Center, which is more than halfway completed. “Everything is going really well,” says Hopkins. “We’re excited and ready to get the system online and start serving some of our industrial customers.” A 1.5-million-gallon elevated water storage tank at exit 101 off of I-20 is also nearing completion.

Debbie Harper, president and CEO of the Newton County Chamber of Commerce, works directly with companies like Meta and Rivian to help them secure the resources they need. During construction of Archer’s facility, for instance, Harper and her team met with a lead on the aerospace company’s staff who sent her a list of capabilities it needed. “We kept a kind of Google Sheet going back and forth,” Harper says.

EV Production: Rivian is on track to begin making vehicles like the R1T all-electric truck in Stanton Springs in 2028. Photo credit: Rivian

“Newton County continues to provide the talent and infrastructure we need to succeed,” says Melissa McCaffrey, head of government affairs for Archer Aviation. “We’ve seen strong support for this facility from national and local government leaders from the start, and that support only continues to increase as we ramp up our manufacturing efforts.”

According to Serra Hall, executive director of the Newton County Industrial Development Authority, it’s the success of the county’s legacy companies – companies like Absolics, Inc., a subsidiary of semiconductor chip maker SKC, General Mills, Bridgestone Golf, RESRG Automotive, Nisshinbo Automotive Manufacturing, French luxury glassmaker Verescence and adhesive manufacturer H.B. Fuller – that attracts new business. “Companies feel confident that they can come to a community like ours and develop,” Hall says.

Plenty of Opportunities: Serra Hall, executive director of Newton County Industrial Development Authority. Photo credit: Eric Sun

Retail and Housing

To entice new and existing residents to spend time and money in Newton County, local government and developers are creating places to eat, shop and live. In 2021, the development authority purchased a 317-acre parcel of land and developed Stanton Grove, situated directly across from the Stanton Springs industrial park. The development authority has begun to market the site and is currently recruiting tenants. “We’re looking for that medium-to-large user as well as that next piece to add value back to our larger companies located around that exit,” Hall says.

Residential Community: The Sinclair at Callaway Farm is a 388-unit apartment complex. Photo credit: Contributed

Stanton Grove will join Covington Town Center, a 180-acre mixed-use development built in partnership with the development authority, the city of Covington and The Foxfield Company, the developer behind the complex’s masterplan. When completed, Covington Town Center will include a Residence Inn, a Courtyard by Marriott and a Staybridge Suites as well as several medical office buildings, 250 apartment units, 270 townhomes and a 175,000-square-foot retail center anchored by a Publix and a 128,000-square-foot Target. Fuqua Development, an Atlanta-based group, is developing the Target, which Hall says is projected to open in 2027.

Not only will the Target create jobs, but it will also prevent “retail leakage” – when residents shop or procure services outside of Newton County, Hall says. By attracting these businesses to Newton County, she points out, in less than 10 years, the Newton County Industrial Development Authority has been able to reduce retail leakage from an estimated $2.9 billion annually to under $1 billion.

Residential communities are popping up across the county, including The Sinclair at Callaway Farm, a 39-acre, 388 apartment community adjacent to Covington Town Center developed by Brook Farm Group. Edison Real Estate Partners is developing a 110-acre project located just outside Covington’s city limits. Dubbed Covington Center, it will offer a mix of 387 single-family homes and townhomes.

Hall and Harper recognize that employees working for Newton County-based companies have options when it comes to where they choose to live. To that end, Harper says that the development authority and Newton County Chamber of Commerce have created Select Newton, a relocation resource.

Additionally, the chamber hopes to launch a foundation centered on talent attraction and retention, according to Harper. It’s in the “very early stages,” she says, adding that the chamber is looking to hire an outside company to come in and identify challenges and help the community “bring together everything that makes someone want to move here, live here, shop here and stay here.”

Meeting Workforce Needs

Even with the influx of industry, Newton County still has a fair amount of rural area, and “people want to preserve that,” says Harper. “But in order to preserve that you have to have density in other places.” Currently, that density is consolidating along I-20.

Creating Career Pathways: Duke Bradley, superintendent of the Newton County School System. Photo credit: Eric Sun

“The best way to control growth is through zoning and quality of building,” says Covington Mayor Fleeta Baggett. Baggett says that once something is zoned, there isn’t much local governments can do to ensure what a property gets used for. “We try to recruit it. It’s all about your economic development,” Baggett says. “Knowing what your community needs and going after that.”

Providing what the community needs is also important when it comes to educating the workforce. In September, Duke Bradley, superintendent of the Newton County School System, unveiled a strategy that aligns classroom instruction with real-world pathways called a Framework for Advancing Workforce Development. Set to launch in the fall of 2026, the framework creates clear career pathways that feed into industries and the in-demand jobs they create in the community. Those pathways “will allow us to produce kids who have the requisite skill, ability, experience, exposure, training, credentialing, mentoring so that they can access those jobs and be competitive within them,” Bradley says. “If we don’t do that, it’s only natural for business to find a workforce wherever they can find it. We just want to be the first choice.”

From family participation in career awareness events to internships and mentoring opportunities, the Newton County School System is working with community partners to make the framework successful. “The rising spirit in Newton County is really around the spirit of collaboration,” Bradley says. “What is particularly encouraging to me is that there is a recognition that when any sector in our community operates in a silo, we’re not as strong as we are when we operate together.”

Community Improvement

Revamping the Corridor: Kathy Morgan, Highway 278 CID administrator. Photo credit: Eric Sun

Collaboration is also key for the Highway 278 Community Improvement District (CID), which plans to improve a 3.2-mile stretch of U.S. 278, the main thoroughfare connecting Covington to I-20. Those improvements include enhancing public safety, developing a community identity, improving mobility for modes of transportation, encouraging quality development and/or redevelopment and maximizing property owner investment. according to Kathy Morgan, Highway 278 CID administrator.

Calling Highway 278 “Newton County’s No. 1 tax generator,” Hall says that a “revamp and a facelift” was imperative. “That corridor was unfortunately heading down a path of blight,” she says.

With plans for a pair of roundabouts, a median, improved sidewalks, lighting, signage and landscaping from Exit 90 to Emory Street, Phase 1 of the three-phase master plan is underway. If all goes well, construction will begin in the second half of 2026 with Phase 1 completed by 2030, Morgan says.

New Landscaping: Rendering of planned improvements to U.S. 278. Photo credit: Contributed

The design team is in place for Phase 2, which extends from Emory Street to Hospital Drive. Morgan says Phase 3 includes the addition of landscaping and streetlights, as well as multiuse path tie-ins from the sidewalks to the Cricket Frog Trail, Newton County’s 14.25-mile rail-to-trail recreational path. Those tie-ins will allow the public to “access the business centers, the grocery stores, the retail and our hospital and doctors’ offices within the CID without ever getting in a car,” Morgan says.

A state and federal highway, U.S. 278 is managed by the Georgia Department of Transportation. Morgan estimates the total cost of the project to be around $25 million, with Phase 1 totaling roughly $16.4 million. GDOT is contributing close to $10 million of that total, with the HWY 278 CID, Newton County and the city of Covington covering approximately $6.7 million.

Rail-to-Trail: Along the Cricket Frog Trail. Photo credit: Contributed

Boosting Healthcare

While the CID works to elevate Highway 278, Piedmont Newton Hospital is also making improvements. Since becoming the hospital’s CEO in July 2023, Lindsey Petrini has worked to increase services at both the 107-bed hospital itself and at Piedmont Primary Care at Eastside Crossing, a 30,000-square-foot medical office complex that opened in spring of 2023. It anchors the Eastside Crossing Shopping Center built from a repurposed Walmart. Services there include endocrinology, neurology and rheumatology.

Expanding Access: Piedmont Newton Hospital. Photo credit: Contributed

Piedmont Newton is an Acute Stroke Ready Center which Petrini says means stroke patients who previously would have needed to leave the county for treatment can be cared for at the hospital. “A patient and family member in Newton County deserves to be treated and cared for in Newton County,” Petrini says. “We take that responsibility very seriously.”

In July, the hospital opened the Piedmont Newton Heart Failure Clinic, expanding access to outpatient heart failure management in the region. And in 2024, the hospital enhanced its imaging services with a new MRI machine, increased its neonatal ICU level from a Level 2 to Level 3 and expanded its orthopedic office to include physical therapy onsite.

“You’ll continue to see us build on those core services,” says Petrini. “You’ll continue to see us work on our cancer services as well.”

Film and Tourism

In addition to expanding healthcare, Newton County is also known for its film industry. In fact, some 75% to 80% of tourists who visit Covington are “film tourists,” estimates Ron Carter, coordinator at the Covington/Newton Regional Visitor Information Center. According to Carter, Newton County has been home to nearly 200 productions, including shows like The Vampire Diaries and Sweet Magnolias and earlier classics like The Dukes of Hazzard and In the Heat of the Night, not to mention the 2000 movie Remember the Titans.

Popular Destination: Ron Carter, coordinator of the Covington/Newton Regional Visitor Information Center. Photo credit: Michie Turpin

Last year around 132,500 guests from 76 countries visited the center. Carter expects the number of visitors to top 150,000 this year. While the center’s on-site museum skews toward film, in January 2024 the museum, in partnership with the Newton County Historical Society, opened a Newton County history section in an effort to attract local residents. The biggest draw? “By far, of course, is the Vampire Diaries,” Carter says.

In more than two decades of working with the center, Carter has seen an overall change in tourism. “When I first started doing this, we were kind of like a pass through on the way to the beach,” he says. “Now we’re the destination. We’re becoming the hub for people to stay.”

In late 2023, Cinelease’s Three Ring Studios completed a $144 million expansion of its Covington complex, bringing its total size to over 300,000 square feet and its soundstages to 15. Peacock’s comedy horror-thriller series Hysteria was filmed at the studio.

Between film, tourism and economic development, there’s a lot of activity and growth in the area. “I am extremely proud of our community as a whole, and especially of our team here in Newton County,” says James Brown, interim county manager. “We continue to attract major projects not only because of our location and resources, but most importantly because of our people.”

Many of those who currently work in Newton County’s government entities were born and raised in the county – Hall, Baggett, Hopkins, Carter and Harper among them. (Morgan has lived in the county since she was a child.) They feel a sense of responsibility when it comes to Newton County and Covington. “Hopefully one day my son wants to build aircraft, make golf balls or decide that he wants to be a designer of an electric truck,” Hall says. “It’s all right here.”