Twenty major public projects are tracked across the Tar Heel State — nineteen underway or funded right now, and one completed in 2026 — a $3.6 billion military rebuild on the coast, a new interstate through Asheville, Raleigh's outer loop closing, a passenger rail line rising toward Richmond, and the state's first freestanding children's hospital. New in this pass: the construction crowding the Charlotte metro — a $1 billion fourth runway at CLT, the I-85 widening through Gaston County, a rebuilt I-85/I-485 interchange, and the new Catawba River bridge. Here is each one, with its price tag, its funding, and the law that made it possible.
*How to read the total: the sum of the published figures in the list below. Bases differ by project — most are total cost estimates, some are federal grants, program totals, or construction contracts as awarded. Each project's expanded view labels its own basis. We add them up with the labels showing rather than pretend they're all the same kind of number.
Hover a pin for the project snapshot. Pin numbers match the project list below. Locations are approximate (nearest city or corridor midpoint) on a schematic state outline.
Click any project to expand its full record — description, owner, dates, funding, the law behind it, and its source. Filter by who owns it and where it stands, or sort by cost.
What this page is: a first full pass (October 23, 2026) over North Carolina's largest federal and state construction projects, plus a same-day deep pass over the Charlotte metro, built from the owners' own published figures. Every row links to its source; every figure was verified against that source on the date stamped above.
The $10M floor: this tally counts construction projects costing more than $10 million. Smaller jobs — however worthy — and routine resurfacing and maintenance are not counted. (Standing rule for every state pass; if volume ever makes the $10M floor unmanageable, it rises to $100M.)
The Charlotte-metro pass (Oct 23, 2026): every public project over $10M under construction or in funded pre-construction within roughly 50 miles of ZIP 28214 — the freeway widenings, interchange rebuilds and ramp work a statewide headline pass misses. Eight projects were added (rows 12–19). Seven are NCDOT state projects. The eighth, row 17, is this tally's first municipal project: the Charlotte airport's Fourth Parallel Runway, owned by the City of Charlotte. Municipal projects are otherwise still out of scope; the airport is included, and labeled, because it is a $1B public work with federal AIP funding in its mix.
What is not here yet: smaller federal projects (individual GSA and VA jobs below the headline scale, single military construction line items inside the Camp Lejeune program), the long tail of mid-size NCDOT lettings outside the Charlotte metro, state park and water-infrastructure projects, and other county/municipal builds (out of scope for this tally by design — the airport runway is the one labeled exception). Hurricane Helene road-and-bridge recovery work in the west — hundreds of sites under NCDOT and federal emergency programs — is being compiled as its own addition. Energy projects are thin in this pass and are a named gap.
One flagged source: Row 11 (NC Children's) currently rests on NC Health News reporting of the partners' and legislators' published figures, because NC Children's has not yet published its own project page. It is flagged here, not hidden, and will be re-based on the owner's source when one exists.
Deliberately excluded: projects completed before this tally began (Charlotte's Jonas Courthouse annex, finished 2025; the state DHHS headquarters Phase 1, finished 2025; Complete 540 Phase 1, opened 2024) and unfunded proposals with no appropriation or award on record (e.g. I-26 Connector Section C, currently unfunded; the I-77 South express lanes — a ~$3.2B project funded for preliminary engineering only in the current STIP, with construction not funded; the Catawba Crossings parkway, whose own feasibility study says construction funding has not been identified; and the Independence Boulevard conversion, unfunded in the draft STIP). Also excluded as finished: the airport's North End-Around Taxiway (completed January 2025).
Local projects note (v1 page): One deliberate exception to this tally's state-and-federal scope: a billion-dollar public work owned by the City of Charlotte, with federal funding in its mix. It is labeled as what it is.