Foxconn takes possession of factory site

No word yet on when construction will begin

MOUNT PLEASANT – Foxconn Technology Group has taken possession of 787 acres of land at its planned factory site in Mount Pleasant and has begun bringing in earth-moving equipment to prepare for construction.

On Thursday, the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturing giant also announced the first subcontracts for site preparation. Hoffman Construction Co., of Black River Falls, will work on excavation, stormwater management and erosion control. Gestra Engineering, a Milwaukee firm identified by Foxconn as minority-owned, will do soil testing.

The announcement of the initial subcontract awards came as a group of local officials gathered before a bulldozer and an excavator — the first of hundreds of pieces of dirt-scraping and pushing machinery that will be used here — to ceremonially mark the imminent start of site preparation on

what Racine Mayor Cory Mason called “an extraordinary and historic day.”

Both pieces of equipment were from Case Construction, the Racine-based wing of CNH Industrial NV.

Exactly when work will begin isn’t yet known. But once it gets going, it will involve the movement of 4 million cubic yards of dirt — enough to cover a football field 1,875 feet deep — by as many as 400 workers at a time, said Adam Jelen, senior vice president at Gilbane Building Co., co-construction manager, with Germany-based M+W Group, for the $10 billion Foxconn manufacturing complex.

Excavation will go as deep as 30 feet, Jelen said. He said all of the dirt that is moved in preparation for construction of 22 million square feet of factory buildings will remain on the site except possibly for some of the topsoil.

The 787 acres Foxconn now holds was amassed from 17 individual parcels purchased from previous owners by the Village of Mount Pleasant. The village turned over the land to FEWI Development Corp., an entity created by Foxconn, a deed recorded Wednesday with the Wisconsin Department of Revenue shows.

The filing says the land is worth $36.9 million, but no money changed hands in the transaction, a village spokesman said. Under Mount Pleasant’s development agreement with Foxconn, the village is to buy the roughly 1,200 acres intended for the primary factory site and turn the land over to the company. Foxconn is to repay the village through a special assessment levied for the public improvements that will be installed.

All told, Mount Pleasant and Racine County will provide $764 million toward development of the huge Foxconn manufacturing campus — all of which, local officials have said, will be repaid by taxes the project generates. The local money is part of some $4 billion in public incentives Foxconn stands to receive, most of it from state taxpayers, in exchange for creating as many as 13,000 direct jobs paying an average of nearly $54,000 a year.

The land recently acquired by Foxconn is in an area bounded by I-94 on the west, Highway H on the east, Highway KR on the south and Braun Road on the north.

Construction of a new water line that will serve the Foxconn plant has been underway for weeks, and expansion and improvements to I-94 — along with the attendant traffic slowdowns — have begun.