The LEGO Group is coming to Virginia.
Like a seventh wonder of the toymaking world, the Denmark-based LEGO Group has broken ground on a new $1 billion factory. The company chose Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam for their sixth location. The seventh? It’s coming to Chesterfield County.
“We looked at more than 40 U.S. states, but the Chesterfield site delivered on three key criteria,” says Timothy Ahrensbach, head of workplace experience at the LEGO Group. “It’s close to highways, seaports, and our major markets; Virginia is supportive of LEGO’s ambitions to build a carbon-neutral factory with access to renewable energy; and here we have access to skilled, high-quality manufacturing talent.”
Already, LEGO has secured partnerships with the Children’s Museum of Richmond (CMoR) and the Science Museum of Virginia, “to support their play and outreach programs,” says Ahrensbach. Both museums are part of the LEGO Playful Learning Museum Network that focuses on “learn-through-play experiences,” according to CMoR’s Sarah Moseley.
LEGO’s Chesterfield site will include a 1.7-million-square-foot facility and begin brick production by 2025, creating more than 1,760 jobs over the next 10 years. Factory tours will be offered, and dedicated employee play spaces—stocked with vats of LEGO bricks, of course, along with a Campfire Room with a crackling LEGO campfire for informal chats, green courtyards, and foosball and ping-pong tables—will create a joyful, playful workplace. LEGO.com
This article originally appeared in the February 2023 issue.
