LS GreenLink breaks ground on $700M tallest structure in Virginia

LS GreenLink USA on Monday broke ground on the tallest structure in Virginia.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine and several Chesapeake officials gathered at 1213 Victory Blvd. in Chesapeake to kickstart the construction of the company’s roughly $700 million offshore wind subsea cable manufacturing facility, the first of its kind in the United States.

The site will include a 750,000-square-foot production facility with a 660-foot tower needed to support the production of massive cables. LS GreenLink USA, a subsidiary of South Korea’s LS Cable & System, first announced the project in July 2024.

At Monday’s event, Youngkin described the project as “a huge milestone” and “a world class manufacturing facility that would be the envy of the world.” He touted Virginia as “the best place to be” and said companies were investing their future in the state due to a business-friendly environment.

Last year, LS GreenLink USA announced it was awarded $99 million in advanced energy project tax credits by the U.S. Department of Energy, and Youngkin approved a $13.2 million grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund to assist the City of Chesapeake with the project.

Kaine pointed to the project as evidence of Virginia’s progress in the offshore-wind industry.

“If you look across the landscape in Virginia, we are becoming clean energy leaders,” he said.

LS Cable & System CEO Bon-Kyu Koo said it was “an honor” to be able to break ground on the project in Chesapeake, and said it reflected a vision rooted in “innovation, infrastructure and opportunity.”

LS GreenLink USA’s managing director Patrick Shim said the project will create more than 330 full-time jobs in its first phase. It will be built on about 50 acres of a 96.6-acre brownfield property in Chesapeake the company purchased for an undisclosed amount.

Shim said construction should wrap up in the third quarter of 2027, with the site operational in the first quarter of 2028. But Koo noted the company intends to build more in future phases, telling the audience of several hundred people, “We have plenty of room to expand as a demand for resilient energy infrastructure continues to grow.”

After the ceremony, both Koo and Shim acknowledged to the media some challenges facing offshore wind projects under the Trump administration. In January, Trump issued an executive order to temporarily cease all federal wind leases under consideration and called for an “immediate review” of the policies before resuming. And earlier this month, Trump issued an order to stop construction on a major offshore wind project in New York to power more than 500,000 homes.

However, Koo said that its Chesapeake site will still have plenty of business from international customers, particularly in Europe. And should the U.S. need more offshore-wind manufacturing later down the line, he noted they will be able to accommodate that.

While Koo said the tariffs being issued by Trump are “a concern” for their business, he and Shim noted the company is mitigating those concerns by looking to obtain materials and products from places not currently being targeted by tariffs.

“We’re trying to source everything locally as much as possible,” Shim said. “So we are not purely depending on foreign countries to get this operation going.”

Founded in 1962, LS Cable & System describes itself as a global leader in power and communication cables and systems, developing and providing cable solutions for power grids and communication networks. The company has over 6,500 employees and 35 subsidiaries in 17 countries.