A changing of the guard for STAMP

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Mark Masse, incoming president of the Genesee County Economic Development Center. Illustration by Garrett Looker.

Effective August 1, Mark Masse will take over as president and CEO of the Genesee County Economic Development Center — the public agency building the STAMP industrial park.

Hailing from Genesee County, Masse earned a public accounting degree from Nazareth University and has worked for the IDA since 2010 as its vice president of operations. He takes over for Steven Hyde, the longtime president and CEO who initiated STAMP’s development. He’ll earn a salary of $185,000 and manage an agency with a $10.5 million budget.

He faces a tall task.

For the past year, his industrial development agency has been mired in conflict and controversy as it has sought to build out STAMP, the sprawling Science, Technology and Advanced Manufacturing Park. Since last July: Contractors building a pipeline for STAMP spilled hundreds of gallons of drilling fluid in federally-protected wetlands; that pipeline has been the subject of two lawsuits; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service revoked a key pipeline permit; Gov. Kathy Hochul awarded the agency a $56 million grant for STAMP; and Plug Power admitted to serious financial concerns and paused construction.

In addition, Investigative Post revealed a campaign of pressure on regulators by numerous politicians, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and Sen. Chuck Schumer, as the agency sought to solve problems with the industrial park.

Masse, however, said he feels optimistic about STAMP’s future. Edwards Vacuum, the 1,250-acre park’s second tenant, currently has its facility under construction. Plus, his agency won the lawsuit brought by Orleans County and is making alternative plans to work around its federal permitting issues. He’s confident the park will fill up in the coming years. That’s despite Investigative Post reporting this week that two prospective tenants backed away from plans to locate at the park.

Masse sat down with Investigative Post for an interview to discuss the park’s future. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Why aren’t companies coming to STAMP right now? 

There’s a lot of reasons why companies decide not to move forward. There’s economic reasons, sometimes they want to do a bigger project, sometimes they want to do a smaller project. And what we’re seeing is that the upcoming presidential election has a lot of companies on pause. I think the two parties are very far apart on policy. And depending on who wins will depend upon which companies may end up being more successful than others due to policy changes, and other things like that. So it is a bit of a tense time.

The STAMP site competes not only nationwide but globally, as well. So, you know, we see a lot of potential foreign investment coming in to do manufacturing. You have geopolitical issues in Europe, with Ukraine and Russia, that have a lot of manufacturing facilities over there extremely nervous.

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It may be next March or April or June before companies decide to start looking again, depending on who gets elected, and depending upon what kind of policies tried to get implemented early in the year.

Has STAMP struggled to attract tenants?

We’ve had a lot of companies taking a look. What we have seen specifically in the semiconductor industry is once the CHIPS Act came out, the projects that we had originally designed the STAMP site for, were going five times the size. So it kind of outgrew the utility capacities we had for chip fab manufacturing. However, it’s a perfect fit now for semiconductor support industries.

Does the CHIPS Act leave STAMP behind?

We aren’t going to be left behind. I think we’re going to be able to have an opportunity here to catch a lot of the support companies. The change that that creates is instead of having one company owning the majority of the acreage, you will now have a lot of diversity there with multiple companies owning multiple acres.

Is there a risk that Plug Power could pull out of STAMP?

We don’t generally comment on private companies, [but] we’ve had conversations with Plug, who reiterates that STAMP is important to them and is part of their overall strategic plan. I think they’re building seven of these facilities across the country, so I think they’re focusing on ones that are closer to being complete. And they’ll come back to the STAMP site.

There’s always risks for any company out there that they might pull out or close. But, you know, I think we’ve proven that in the instance where that has happened, we’ve been able to find a company to come in and take it over and be just as successful, if not more so.

Site selectors have told us their clients have passed on STAMP because it’s too rural. Can you respond to that?

I think those companies had personal preferences, not so much that STAMP was too far out in the boondocks. If you look at the commute times, within 40 minutes, we can get to 2.2 million people. You’re commuting the opposite way as everybody else. Instead of going to Buffalo or Rochester, you’re coming here.

There are a lot of companies that prefer to be a little bit more, not isolated, but a little more out for, number one, safety and security reasons for what they’re working on. [Companies] want the greenfield, they want to be able to do a lot of the green infrastructure that’s necessary out there. We’ve heard some companies have concerns over [the location] but a lot of other companies love the site because of the ability, the availability of people to be able to commute in, as well as the number of available workers within, you know, a 30-minute commute.

Why was that particular location chosen for STAMP? 

The types of companies that were looking to attract are high power users. The closer you are to those lines, the cheaper it is to be able to put in that infrastructure, and the electrical infrastructure is significantly the most expensive out of all the infrastructure needed. You’re talking with companies that want to utilize 100 to 200 megawatts, and you’re not just going to pull those off a set of lines out here.

[New York Power Authority hydropower] is another huge benefit. Because what we see from a statewide and global competition, our ability to provide power at sub-five cents per kilowatt hour is as competitive if not one of the best rates you’re gonna find across the country. And when you have a company that is using 100 to 200 megawatts, when you look at their operating costs, power is a significant value out of their total operating costs, which is why that’s so, so important to them.

Wouldn’t it have made more sense for another agency, not the Genesee County Economic Development Center, to build an industrial park like STAMP?

I don’t know why we wouldn’t want to participate in our own success. We wouldn’t want to leave our success up to somebody else. We’ve been working very hard for 20 years, and I think our track record of success of shovel-ready parks in Genesee County proves that we are very good at what we do and we can be successful. So if we were to wait around for everybody else, I don’t know if anything would happen.

Environmental advocates have expressed concerns about STAMP being located next to state and federal wildlife preserves. Can you respond to that criticism?

I think first of all people have this misnomer of industrial parks. They think it’s still this 1950s-type manufacturing that’s belching black smoke. If you look at all the regulations that are out there, when it comes to permitting, and operation for a company nowadays, it’s very stringent and very strict. The type of park that we are developing is not going to be your Love Canal or anything along those lines. The companies that we are bringing in are extremely environmentally conscious, they want to do green facilities as much as they can. And they want to do as much as they can to enhance the environment in which they are locating.

The Tonawanda Seneca Nation has also expressed concern about STAMP and is opposed to its development. Can you respond to the Nation’s concerns?

For the Tonawanda Seneca Nation, our original conversations with them were about jobs for their kids. And we had a good relationship with them up until about 2016 [or] 2017 when they suddenly decided that they wanted to oppose the project. We’ve done significant outreach to them to which they’ve decided not to respond. There are water lines [terminated] at every entrance to the Nation. If they wanted public water, they could have it. They’ve told us to stop asking them about public water. We’ve offered to provide them with an acre or two if they wanted to build a facility on the STAMP site. They’ve declined.

We’ve talked to them about [working] with the Office of Historical Preservation to get grant money to construct a museum on your site to house the artifacts that were brought up during the archaeological work at STAMP. I offered to work with them on the development of a Seneca history trail within Western New York. They declined to respond to me on that. We’ve offered to set aside money, and we have set aside money, to cover training programs for anybody from the nation that wishes to participate in our current training programs we have now or any in the future. They have declined to respond to any of those. 

Can you understand the Tonawanda Seneca Nation’s perspective on STAMP at all?

I understand that there are, you know, obviously, cultural differences between us and the [the Nation].  And we said, if you have issues that are of a significant concern, we will address them, and we have not seen any that would impact their ability to use the Big Woods.

We reported recently on a pressure campaign, stemming from your agency, to speed up approvals for permits needed for STAMP. Why did you ask Sen. Chuck Schumer and his staff for help on permits?

So at that point in time, we’d had everything submitted. And it had been pretty much a year waiting on [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] to make a determination. And, you know, whenever you have an issue with a governmental agency, you go to your advocates. And our elected officials are advocates no different than if somebody had an issue with town permitting, they would go to local officials to help with that.

Is five years too short of time to get a permit? I don’t know. To me, that seems a bit long. And when you don’t get responses back, you have to talk to people that can check in and let you know if there’s any issues or problems or additional information that’s required when somebody’s not responding to you.

Can you respond to the fact the DEC sped up work on permits for STAMP?

I have no idea about that at all. I wasn’t involved in those [decisions]. I don’t know anything about any mistakes that were made, nobody notified us of any corrections, the statute of limitations has passed on those permits and whatever was issued. So if somebody were to challenge them, they should have challenged them then if they felt like there were corrections needed.

Attorneys have said the wastewater permit for one of STAMP’s pipelines violates the Clean Water Act. Can you respond to that? 

We don’t believe it violates the Clean Water Act. And I can tell you that I don’t think the DEC would issue a permit that’s in violation, because if it was, and if they issued it, you know, by mistake, they would have revoked it by now.

There is a phosphorus offset program, there’s varying opportunities to do that, not just the farmland piece. I believe we will comply with all rules and regulations as it relates to anything that is pre-treated and discharged into a body of water.

Your agency is already building a lot of infrastructure for the STAMP tenants. Why are tax incentives necessary on top of that?

I can tell you that other states are willing to give them far more than we are. But we’ve still been able to be successful in attracting [companies] here because of the other attributes we have. And I know people are like, ‘Well, you’re giving incentives away.’ I can tell you that the current payments made by Plug are probably 27 times for the school district what the raw land was generating in property taxes. So these projects are significant. And they also draw a lot less municipal services than the residents do.

The counter to that is that Plug would be paying even more if they were paying their full tax bill. Why can they not afford to pay their property taxes?

It’s not that they can’t afford to pay their property taxes, it’s that if they decided to locate somewhere else, they wouldn’t have to pay anything. And there are other states that are offering zero taxes for 20 years. There’s different benefits that that state can provide. There’s different benefits that we can provide. Anytime we’re in a competitive situation, if we don’t come up with some sort of a competitive offer, we’re never going to get a project. 

Will STAMP attract another company in the next year?

It’s a funny thing, you never know. We have companies say we want to move dirt in three months. We’ve heard other companies say we’re looking at moving dirt in two years. It’s very difficult to tell. And again, I think the presidential election is going to be a big driver in what direction a lot of things are going to go in this country.

J. Dale Shoemaker