Union County leaders broke ground last Thursday on a permanent regional autopsy center near Wingate, a facility years in the making that's meant to finally give this corner of North Carolina reliable, local access to forensic pathology services. The 15,100-square-foot South Piedmont Regional Autopsy Center will sit on a 30.27-acre parcel off U.S. 74, near the Union County Sheriff's Office administration building, and once complete it will serve Union, Anson, Cabarrus, Gaston, Montgomery, Moore, Richmond, Rowan and Stanly counties.
The project has been building momentum for months. As The Enquirer Journal reported, Union County will own and operate the center, which is expected to be complete by the end of 2027. State funding backing the project includes $21.5 million in non-recurring capital funding for construction plus $2 million in recurring annual funding for operations and equipment, according to a Union County Government release published this month.
Union County Assistant Manager Clayton Voignier, who spoke at the groundbreaking, said the center developed through a combination of state, community and county partnerships, and that staff had already been hired ahead of breaking ground. He described the project as more than brick and mortar. “The center will be more than just a building,” Voignier said, adding that it will communicate with families and serve the community.
A Years-Long Gap in Local Death Investigations
The need for a permanent facility traces back to 2022, when Union County lost its local autopsy coverage and death investigations had to be absorbed directly by the state's central office in Raleigh, according to a North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services report. That meant bodies were transported hours away for examination, adding time and logistical strain to cases that families and prosecutors were already waiting on.
Those delays were part of a much larger statewide problem. Autopsy report turnarounds across North Carolina have frequently stretched from several months to over a year, driven by a roughly 56% vacancy rate among forensic pathologist positions in the state medical examiner's office and a national shortage of forensic pathologists, per WFAE. Those delays carry real consequences for families waiting on paperwork.
Jonathan Privette, Union County's medical examiner and forensic pathologist, said delayed autopsies can hold up finalized death certificates, estate closures and insurance benefits for grieving families. He added that the delays can also slow criminal investigations that depend on timely forensic findings. Privette is expected to lead the new facility once it opens.
State Lawmakers Add More Money and Raise Examiner Fees
The $21.5 million commitment wasn't the last word from Raleigh. North Carolina General Assembly budget documentation from June shows lawmakers allocated an additional $1.5 million in non-recurring state funds for capital improvements and equipment purchases at the center for the 2026–27 fiscal year, part of broader investments in medical examiner infrastructure under Senate Bill 257.
Lawmakers also moved to ease the statewide staffing crunch more directly. In June, the General Assembly doubled the state-mandated fee paid to county medical examiners per completed case, from $200 to $400 — a rate that had been frozen since 2015. The same budget cycle steered more than $6.1 million from the Opioid Abatement Fund to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to speed up toxicology screening equipment and temporary staffing, reflecting how the surge in overdose deaths has strained forensic toxicology statewide.
North Carolina's medicolegal death investigation system dates back to the Statewide Medical Examiner Act of 1967 and relies on a patchwork of state central operations, regional autopsy centers, and contracted hospital pathology departments, the health department's report notes. The South Piedmont center is meant to plug one of the gaps in that patchwork for the nine-county region it will serve.
Hundreds of Autopsies Already Completed at Temporary Site
While the Wingate building rises, the region hasn't been without services. The center has been operating temporarily out of Atrium Health Union in Monroe since December 2024, and has performed approximately 580 autopsies as of this month, per The Enquirer Journal's reporting. Union County Government put that tally even higher, reporting approximately 600 completed autopsies since temporary operations began.
The county also selected Wharton-Smith, Inc. as Construction Manager at Risk and approved a Guaranteed Maximum Price contract amendment for the buildout in August, according to Union County Board of Commissioners records, a step that moved the project from planning documents toward an actual job site.
What the Finished Facility Will Include
Once finished, the new building will contain four primary autopsy stations plus a separate decomposition and isolation station, refrigeration capacity for 93 decedents, an X-ray room, specimen and evidence storage, observation and examination areas, and specialized laboratory and biological processing space. It will also include offices and workstations for pathologists and administrative staff, along with mechanical systems built for forensic pathology's temperature, humidity and ventilation needs, and enhanced security throughout.
The design also leaves room to grow: the facility is built to accommodate future expansion, including space for a forensic laboratory. That could eventually support local toxicology testing — Union County has been studying since March whether toxicology work for autopsy cases could be done locally rather than shipped to the state's central laboratory, according to Citizen Portal. Centralized toxicology testing has long been one of the biggest contributors to statewide autopsy backlogs, and whether Union County ultimately builds that local capacity remains an open question.
For now, county officials are framing the groundbreaking as the start of a permanent fix to a problem that's dogged the region for years. The South Piedmont Regional Autopsy Center aims to speed up both autopsies and the prosecutions that often depend on them, while strengthening forensic pathology services across the nine-county region it's built to serve.
