Scouting a location
Building a $17 billion chip factory upstate may not be Samsung ’s first choice, but it’s giving a western New York site a hard look.
Building a $17 billion computer chip factory in upstate New York may not be Samsung’s first choice — but the South Korean electronics giant is giving a potential site in western New York a hard look.
Samsung has been scouting a location for the new chip factory not only in Texas, but also Arizona and New York, according to a filing made last month with the Texas comptroller’s office.
Specifically, Samsung has been looking at the Western New York Science & Technology Advanced Manufacturing Park, or STAMP, in Genesee County.
Samsung’s first choice is to build in Austin, Texas, where it already operates two chip factories.
But it says it needs hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks from the local school district and other government entities in order to build that it would get by essentially limiting its property assessment used to calculate its property taxes.
Otherwise it will consider locations in Arizona, New York or possibly back in South Korea where the company has several chip fabs and its headquarters.
“Without the appraised value limitation award, the company would likely locate the project in Arizona, New York, or Korea,” Samsung said in a filing with the Texas comptroller.
Samsung said in its July 6 filing that it has already hired
consultants to evaluate incentive packages from Arizona and New York, along with engineers to see whether the sites meet the project’s specifications. Samsung is looking at two sites in Arizona outside of Phoenix.
“Applicant is also considering a site in Genesee County,” the Samsung filing states, referring to the STAMP site. “The company is engaged in active negotiations with all three locations. Each has offered robust property tax abatement, as well as significant grants and/or refundable tax credits to fund the necessary infrastructure improvements.”
It is unclear what the state of New York would offer Samsung to locate at STAMP. A spokeswoman with Empire State Development, the state agency that oversees the state’s business incentive programs, did not immediately have a comment. Neither Samsung nor Genesee County officials immediately responded to requests for comment.
And if Samsung needed a friend in New York, it likely has
one in Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who lives in Buffalo and is set to take the reigns of state government when Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s resignation takes effect next week. Although Hochul will have her hands full with the
current COVID-19 resurgence, she is likely to look for projects
with a western New York focus, such as public funding for a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills, who have threatened to move to Austin, Texas without such a
deal. STAMP is about 40 minutes from Buffalo.
Globalfoundries received a $1.4 billion incentive package to
build its Fab 8 factory in Saratoga County where it employs 3,000 people, and Cree, a North Carolina company that makes power electronics chips, received a $600 million state grant to build its new factory outside of Utica. The Samsung factory would employ 1,800 people.
Samsung may also be eligible for up to $2 billion in federal support if a $52 billion semiconductor manufacturing incentive fund is approved by Congress and President Joe Biden. The plan has been pushed by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer.