Foxconn confirms factory site
Land acquisition continues as project steams ahead
The massive Foxconn Technology Group factory that backers say could employ up to 13,000 people will be built in the far southwestern corner of the Village of Mount Pleasant, local government and company officials confirmed Wednesday.
But Foxconn and its government partners in Racine County are seeking to acquire far more land than the roughly 1,200 acres that the factory will cover. They are seeking another area of perhaps 600 acres for construction staging, and a third of about 1,000 acres for future Foxconn expansion.
Some 90% of that total area — nearly 2,900 acres in all — is under contract, Racine County Executive Jonathan Delagrave said in an interview Wednesday.
Most of Foxconn’s sprawling industrial complex — covering 20 million square feet, it will be by far the largest manufacturing campus in the state — will spread over 1,198 acres largely bounded by I-94 on the west, Highway KR on the south, Highway H on the east and Braun Road on the north.
The project will include upgrades of the I-94 interchanges at Highway 11 and Highway KR. Officials also are seeking to buy another 1,073 acres between Braun Road and Highway 11, and an area of 622 acres east of Highway H.
The unveiling of Foxconn’s site choice came at an elaborate presentation at the S.C. Johnson iMet Center in Sturtevant. About 200 people were present, and rooms featured displays of the ultrahigh-definition screens that Foxconn plans to build in Wisconsin.
“This is truly an historic day for Racine County,” Delagrave said during the announcement.
Delagrave said three informational sessions will be held in coming weeks to seek public comments.
Scores of landowners hold property within the Foxconn area. Property owners have been offered $50,000 an acre for open land — several times the going rate for agricultural land in the vicinity.
Rudy Baker, a retired tavern keeper who lives on Braun Road, is upset about the project and what it could mean for his residence.
“I hate it. I don’t even want to think about it. I have my forever home that I have been living in for 40 years, and this is where my wife and I planned on spending the rest of our lives. Now we are just absolutely sick about the whole damn thing,” Baker said.
While some have questioned whether Foxconn will truly follow through on its ambitious plans — pointing to proposed projects in places such as Pennsylvania and Brazil that didn’t get built as originally announced — a key Foxconn executive reiterated Wednesday that the project here will go forward.
Louis Woo, special assistant to Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou, said the company will hire 13,000 people directly and
create “tens of thousands” of additional jobs at suppliers.
Later Wednesday, in a brief interview, Woo said Foxconn could have “at least a few hundred” manufacturing workers in Racine County by the end of next year.
But they very well could be working in leased space while Foxconn develops its main manufacturing campus — a process that could take four to five years.
Interviewed after the formal presentation, Woo sketched a rough timeline of the company’s plans to ramp up electronics production here.
First up, possibly, would be finishing work on televisions, monitors or other devices started in Japan and perhaps further processed in Mexico before being sent on to Wisconsin. That production likely would be in a plant Foxconn leases in Racine County.
“And by then how many people would be there?” he said. “At least a few hundred — not up to 1,000 — by 2018.”
Among the early facilities Foxconn actually builds in Mount Pleasant will be a “high-precision tool and die” plant that will make housings for the screens the company produces.
The heart of the Racine County complex, however, will be a factory — what Foxconn calls a “fab” — that will build screens even more advanced than the “Generation 10” units produced in the Japan factory toured earlier this year by state and local officials. That “Generation 10.5” plant “is going to take about four to five years to complete,” Woo said.
Woo’s presence here signals the importance of the Wisconsin project to Foxconn. A former Apple executive (in the 1980s and ’90s) who holds a PhD from Stanford University, Woo is viewed as the No. 2 executive at Foxconn, under Gou.
Asked about other places where Foxconn initially announced major projects but then didn’t follow through, Woo said Wisconsin is different.
Suggesting that plans in Brazil and Pennsylvania didn’t come to fruition in part because of issues with government partners, he offered an analogy: “When you clap your hands, you require your left hand and your right hand to clap together to make it work,” he said.
Tim Sheehy, president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, said he’s confident the deal will come to fruition.
“We would not have made this announcement (Wednesday) if we weren’t confident that the land was assembled and that they were ready to get going in the spring,” Sheehy said.
The company still needs to finalize a contract with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., in order to receive up to $3 billion in taxpayer incentives, but Sheehy said he thinks that’s coming soon.
Work is still underway to acquire land needed for the complex.
“We are expecting that we will begin closing on land purchases very early next year,” said Mount Pleasant Village President David DeGroot.
Thomas Fliess Jr., who owns land in the area, said he’s encouraged about the economic growth the project will bring to Racine County.
“Foxconn is only going to be a fraction of what happens here in the next two to five years,” he said.
As for property owners: “I know there were people who were unhappy about this right from the start, but ... I think everybody’s going to be taken care of,” Fliess said.