LG Energy Solution sign plan approved by Queen Creek planning commission

Signs will soon be going up at the LG Energy Solution battery plant in Queen Creek.

The Queen Creek Planning & Zoning Commission approved a comprehensive sign plan for the plant generally located at the southeast corner of Ironwood and Pecos roads.

At its Wednesday meeting, the commission voted 6-0 to approve the sign plan request by the office design firm Ware. Chairman David Gilette was absent.

The LGES site consists of about 109 acres and more than 1.4 million square feet of advanced manufacturing and office space.
The approved sign plan includes:

• Two 725-square-foot internally illuminated building-mounted signs
• One 460-square-foot internally illuminated building-mounted sign
• One 96-square-foot ground-mounted primary monument sign that will be 8 feet tall
• One 42-square-foot ground-mounted secondary monument sign between five feet and six feet tall.
• Fourteen directory signs ranging from 8 to 43 square feet between 4 feet and 6.8 feet tall
• Five ground-mounted 33-square-foot building identifier signs located on the site and not visible to or accessible by the public
• Three flag poles flying the United States, Arizona and LG company flags.

LGES asked for a deviation from the town’s sign ordinance of no more than a total of 150 square feet of wall signs for industrial facilities. LGES wall signs will occupy a total of 1,910 square feet.

“The subject property is a large manufacturing facility whose building dimensions, campus size and operational intensity substantially exceed those of typical industrial commercial buildings,” according to the project narrative. “The current 150-square-foot sign limitation appears to have been established as a generalized standard applicable to a broad range of building sizes and does not adequately address the needs of modern large-scale industrial facilities when the size requirement was put into place.”

Another requested deviation was for vehicle direction signs.

“The zoning ordinance maximum is 3 total square feet, 4 feet tall. The applicant is requesting 14 total signs ranging in size from 8 square feet to 43 square feet to provide pedestrian and vehicle directions throughout the entire campus,” Sarah Clark, a principal planner for the town, told the commission.

The planning commission’s decision does not have to go before the Queen Creek Town Council.

“I think it’s awesome that we have LG here and in the town. I think that’s great. What a cool big massive building,” Commission Member Alex Matheson said. “A building like that, I think if we had smaller signage, it would look weird. So, I think this totally makes sense.”

In April 2022, South Korean electric vehicle battery manufacturer LG Energy Solution successfully bid on a 640-acre parcel of state-owned land in Queen Creek to build the plant, purchasing the first 320 acres with an option to buy the remaining 320 acres.

A year later, the company announced that it was investing $5.5 billion to build a two-facility manufacturing complex at Ironwood and Pecos roads that would be the company’s first stand-alone cylindrical and ESS battery plants in North America.

The first facility is a cylindrical battery plant called LG Energy Solution Arizona. It will produce 46-Series batteries for electric vehicles.

The second facility, which was temporarily paused in July 2024, is planned as an ESS battery manufacturing facility called LG Energy Solution Arizona ESS that will produce lithium iron phosphate pouch-type batteries for energy storage systems. It is considered to be one of the first ESS-exclusive battery production facilities in the world.

There is no word yet on when construction on that facility will start.

As part of its development deal with LGES, Queen Creek agreed to construct new streets, widen streets, and make water and wastewater improvements in the public area adjacent to the complex at an estimated total cost of $84 million.

The town will be reimbursed for the cost of the infrastructure through state and town construction sales taxes paid by LGES as it builds its facility.

Through February, LG Energy Solution Arizona has hired about 150 employees who are being trained at Central Arizona College’s Superstition campus in Apache Junction, according to Queen Creek’s economic development office.

The LG Energy Solution Arizona President Richard Ra has stated that the facility will begin manufacturing EV batteries by the end of 2026 and will employ 1,500 workers by 2027.

Janet Perez can be reached at jperez@iniusa.org. Please send your comments about this article to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.