NCDOT officials say asbestos cleanup will begin by the end of this week or early next week on the planned Potts Street-Sloan Street connector, in Davidson’s west side neighborhood. The cleanup should take about a month, officials told about 50 people at a community meeting at Ada Jenkins Center Monday night.
Workers began putting up a fence around the site Monday. The DOT says it will monitor conditions and air quality daily during the work, and will stop if there are risks of airborne asbestos, which can cause fatal lung disease and cancer.
Workers will keep the area wet and use fencing to prevent dust from getting airborne, NCDOT consultant Donald Griffith said Monday. “If windbreaks and misting are insufficient for controlling any dust produced, operations will cease until conditions improve or additional measures are put in place to control it,” he said.
Asbestos was a major concern at the meeting. Some residents also were concerned about construction-related disruptions, including road closings, noise and night work.
And several people said they’re worried that the NCDOT’s multi-year improvements to the corridor from North Main Street in Cornelius north to Griffith Street in Davidson would make it a cut-through for speeding cars. Mayor Rusty Knox said at the end of the meeting that he will work to make sure that doesn’t happen, and that the town’s 25 mph speed limit is enforced.
The road project, which has been discussed for decades, is expected to be finished in later winter/early spring 2027. NCDOT officials also said Monday that the new roundabout at North Main and Davidson streets in Cornelius is behind schedule.
[Updated: Project manager Jeremy Sawicki said under the contract, the Cornelius roundabout is supposed to be done by Sept. 1, 2026. A DOT spokesperson said Friday they expect the contractor to provide an update on the timeline by early January. If it’s not done Sept. 1, NCDOT will begin collecting daily penalties.]
Together, the two projects will provide an alternate route to Main Street/NC 115 through Davidson. The Davidson portion also calls for improved sidewalks on Potts and Sloan streets, the new road connecting Sloan Street and Potts Street, and a new roundabout at Griffith, Sloan and Beaty streets..
Asbestos from the nearby Carolina Asbestos Co. mill on Depot Street was spread across the neighborhood for decades in the last century. Soil sampling in 2020 found asbestos at more than two dozen locations in the corridor. Some was removed as part of a Charlotte Water project a few years ago. Other asbestos-contaminated soil in people’s yards was cleaned up by the federal Environmental Protection Agency in 2017 and 2021.
If soil containing the substance is disturbed, it can become airborne. It’s known to cause lung cancer and asbestosis. Many residents of Davidson’s West Side neighborhood have lost family members to asbestos-related disease, and it’s a lingering sore point in the neighborhood.
Work on the road project began the week of Nov. 17, with tree-clearing on the wooded area between the curve on Sloan Street and the Potts Street cul-de-sac. NCDOT has previously acquired property on the connection route from the town and property owners.
Here are a few more details from Monday’s meeting:
ASBESTOS
Q. When will the asbestos cleanup begin?
Donald Griffith, project consultant with NCDOT: “The accredited abatement subcontractor will be mobilizing over the next week and will begin installing access-control fencing the week of December 8, which is obviously this week, around the areas they intend to work initially. The fencing will be moved as the work progresses, meaning we’ll work this area, move forward, take that containment with us as we go up. It is anticipated that with good weather and the holiday considerations, that the abatement for the entire project will take about a month.”
Q. How will the asbestos contractor keep asbestos from getting into the air?
Griffith: Surfactant (a wetting agent), for sure, and water will be used to suppress the dust.
Q. What is the size of the planned buffer zone?
Griffith said his research and information from the town about past asbestos removal projects, tells him that the zone will be about 25 to 50 feet. “So we have a clean buffer between the DOT project and the residential properties. … A chain link fence will be used as a barrier,” he said. That barrier was installed beginning Monday.
Q. Will neighbors near the planned asbestos abatement be specifically informed, and how?
Griffith: “The answer is no. Specific notification won’t be given to neighbors, as the parcels immediately adjacent to the planned abatement have previously been addressed by removal efforts performed by the EPA in 2017.” Griffith showed a slide with green markings showing where asbestos was removed in earlier projects.
Q. Will there be air quality reports available regarding the asbestos remediation, something that indicates testing was done and what that looks like, so the public is aware?
Town Manager Jamie Justice: “Yeah, the contractor has told us they will be providing reports. We will have those available if necessary.”
Officials said the air quality will be checked by two monitoring devices that will be moved around the project site. Samples will be checked on site and work will be adjusted or halted as needed to make sure asbestos contamination does not reach neighbors. Sawicki said they likely would publish the air quality data weekly.
TRAFFIC
Q. How will the project affect traffic on Griffith, Sloan, Beaty and other streets?
Griffith: “I’m sure that if you live in this area, you already know that there will be short-term daily lane closures on Sloan Street and likely Griffith Street, but not at the same time, where the abatement work encroaches on traffic. Like any other roadway operation we have with the NCDOT that works within five feet of travelway we do those lane closures. So the work on Griffith Street will be restricted to the clearing and abatement operations as the remainder of the construction will not be released until the contractor is finished with the Potts Street-NC 115 roundabout (on North Main Street Cornelius). … So within the construction phasing of that contract, we required them to get NC 115 roundabout open to traffic prior to moving to this location. …. Once the abatement is complete where the Sloan pots connection is, the public may see night work operations begin for drainage, water, sewer in that area, across Sloan Street, to mitigate traffic impacts, while abatement is still taking place up Sloan Street and the Sloan-Griffith-Beatty intersection. So you’ll have simultaneous operations at that point, one some day operations and some night operations. Also, last but not least, there will be a decontamination area where any workers inside the work area will be rinsed off, and all PPE that personal protective equipment that they’re using at the time, will be disposed of prior to exiting the fenced area, much like we’re treating the truck, we’re getting it contained before it exits, the personnel are going to be treated the same way.”
SPEEDING
Q. Will there be enforcement of speed limits through the project area – Potts-Sloan-Beaty streets?
Doug Wright: “Yes, there will. We actually have more traffic officers out there now than we ever have.” He said the roadway is designed to keep speeds under 25 miles per hour. He was asked if the speed limit could be reduced to 20. He said the townwide speed limit by ordinance is 25mph. “In most cases, posting the limit doesn’t necessarily change the prevalent speed on the road, but we’ll keep the prevalent speed on the road under 25 – that’s our commitment. But we can’t necessarily make it 20 or 15 by posting that limit. It’s got to be enforced, and the conditions on the road have to lend themselves to that as well.”
Mayor Rusty Knox: “This project has been in the works for 15 plus years, and we’re now at the disruptive state for everybody. It’s ugly. It’s probably going to get more ugly. The one promise that I’ve made to residents along this corridor, Tina, Tim, Ruby, y’all know I’ve said this, this is not going to be a cut-through. And I will promise you that that’s one thing that I’ve heard time and again with these questions that came up about speed. This is not going to be a cut through. And I just got re-elected, so you have me for two more years to go to bat for you for that. But I I’m hell bent on making sure that people are not going to say, ‘Great, I can cut through to Cornelius now, or I can cut through from Cornelius to Griffith Street now. That’s not going to happen. … I want everybody to know 25 is going to mean 25 if I’ve got anything to do with it. And pedestrian safety has been first and foremost us, because we’ve had four people killed in the last 11 years in this town, and pedestrians always lose when there’s a conflict with a car. S o pedestrian safety is going to be the most important thing. … We have four schools within five blocks of this project. So it’s a construction zone. We’ve got to pay attention to that too. But whatever we can do as a town to help mitigate and provide safety as this project moves along, we will.” Someone in the audience commented that Potts Street is already a cut-through. “Yeah, that’s true,” Knox said. “But I think as time goes on, we want to make sure that this is if it’s traffic calming, if it’s speed humps, if it’s enforced traffic regulations with police monitoring and .. I don’t know the tag readers or what, I’m not sure how far I can push that. But just know that safety is going to be the most important thing about this project. This is just not going to be a quick way to get through Davidson.”
TIMELINE
Q. How long from start to finish is the project expected to take?
Jeremy Sawicki, NCDOT resident engineer for this project, said it should completed in 2027.
Q. When will the Potts Street-NC 115 roundabout in Cornelius be finished?
Sawicki said the work was originally supposed to be complete in Sept. 1, 2026, but it’s now behind schedule: “We’ve fallen behind on that project. There’s been several issues with utilities that were not as represented on the plans. We’ve had to work around some things. Contractors had a lot of turnover, so they’ve struggled with keeping enough staff in place to complete that project.” He said there are penalties in the contract if the contractor does not meet the original deadline. An NCDOT spokesperson said Friday that they’re expecting the contractor to provide an updated timeline by early January.
Along those lines, Donald Griffith said there are incentives in the Potts-Sloan-Beaty contract for the contractor to complete that work on time.
TREE CUTTING AT ROOSEVELT WILSON PARK
Q. A row of old oak trees was cut down along Griffith Street near Roosevelt Wilson Park. Can you explain why those trees needed to come down, and is there any plan to restore some of the aesthetics along there as a result of the trees coming down?
Donald Griffith: “So with the (Griffith Street) roundabout construction, there’s also utility relocation that has to take place. And unfortunately, with that, relocation requires space, and in order to get the space, we have to go beyond what the roundabout itself would require in order to get additional easement for utilities to be relocated, so thereby necessitating extra space outside of the roundabout to relocate those utilities.”
Jeremy Sawicki: “Unfortunately, working with gravity sewer, there’s not a whole lot of paths that you can take, and we are limited by the lake (Roosevelt WIlson Park pond) and the roadway, so there’s really not much of a path that could be followed up there without taking those trees. Those are very large trees.”
READ MORE
You can find out more about the Potts-Sloan-Beaty project on the town website.
Read/Listen to my 2021 project “Asbestos Town” for public radio station WFAE in Charlotte. The 1-hour documentary includes a history of the Carolina Asbestos Co. and the legacy of asbestos contamination in Davidson.
WFAE picked up a radio spot on this story. See Dec. 10, 2025, “Asbestos concerns resurface in Davidson as NCDOT begins new road project
David Boraks 