Jan 24
2022
Another high-tech miss for Genesee County
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Another tech giant with big microchip expansion plans is bypassing New York, this time for Ohio.
Intel Corp. announced on Friday plans to invest at least $20 billion to develop amicrochip manufacturing complex in Jersey Township, outside of Columbus. Company officials said the plant will employ 3,000. Construction is expected to begin later this year, with production expected by the end of 2025.
Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger said the project is part of the company’s plans to invest $100 billion to build up to eight microchip factories on the Ohio campus by 2030.
The project is being billed as the largest economic development project in Ohio history and one of the largest microchip manufacturing investments ever in the United States.
So far, there’s no word on local or state subsidies. However, Gelsinger and other Intel officials have been advocating for approval of the CHIPS Act, a federal bill that would pump $52 billion into domestic microchip manufacturing.
Before choosing Ohio, Intel officials reportedly considered sites in New York state, including the Science, Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park in rural Genesee County.
While local, state and federal officials have touted the largely undeveloped 1,250-acre site in the Town of Alabama as a future landing spot for various big tech companies, to date, there is just one tenant – a hydrogen fuel company called Plug Power. The subsidy package for that project amounted to $4 million per job.
Last year, the Genesee County Economic Development Center and the Empire State Development Corp. came up short in a bid to lure another microchip giant – Samsung – to STAMP, despite offering an incentive package worth nearly $2 billion.
Samsung accepted a smaller subsidy package worth just over $1 billion from the state of Texas, where it will build a microchip plant in the City of Taylor, outside Austin.
Genesee County economic development officials have so far spent more than $30 million to develop STAMP, which remains mostly fields. A letter from the Empire State Development Corp. offering an incentive package worth $1.9 billion to Samsung indicated that another $200 million in infrastructure improvements would be needed.
