Eli Lilly’s Goochland plant wins national economic development award

Eli Lilly’s planned plant at West Creek Business Park has picked up another public marker of its size, winning a CiCi Award from Trade & Industry Development as Goochland County keeps pushing one of the largest industrial projects in its history.

The county said the project was chosen from among hundreds of applications for the 2026 awards, which recognize major capital investment and community impact. This year’s honors included 31 projects nationwide, split between 15 Corporate Investment winners and 16 Community Impact winners, in the award program’s 20th year.

That recognition matters in Goochland because the Lilly project is still far more than a headline from last fall. Virginia officials announced on Sept. 16, 2025 that Eli Lilly would invest $5 billion in a new manufacturing facility at West Creek Business Park, a jump from an earlier plan of just over $2 billion. The company said the site will create 650 high-wage permanent jobs and 1,800 construction jobs, making it one of the biggest economic-development wins ever announced in the county.

For the near term, the project points to a burst of activity around West Creek Parkway. A 227-acre campus at 12575 West Creek Parkway and a facility planned at more than 200,000 square feet will bring years of construction traffic, supplier demand and job-site activity to a part of Goochland already shaped by office and business park growth. It also puts pressure on the county to think about roads, utilities and the kind of public investment that often follows a project this large.

County Administrator Jeremy Raley has been one of the local officials tied to the project as Goochland County Economic Development worked with state and regional partners, including the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, to secure the deal. The county has framed the award as a sign that those efforts paid off and that Goochland can still compete for major employers even with its rural identity intact.

Lilly said the Goochland site will be its first dedicated, fully integrated active pharmaceutical ingredient and drug product facility for its emerging bioconjugate platform and monoclonal antibody portfolio. The company said it will support medicines for cancer, autoimmune conditions and other advanced therapies, putting a global pharmaceutical supply chain project in the middle of West Creek and giving Goochland a long-term industrial presence with the potential to expand the county’s tax base and reshape the corridor around it.