Thruway corridor fares well in manufacturing study:
https://buffalonews.com/business/loc...4a8758a63.html
From the article: “The Thruway corridor has landed some blockbuster projects over the past several months.
Just north of the Batavia exit, Edwards Vacuum is preparing to build a $319 million manufacturing plant. Farther east on the highway, Micron Technology is planning to invest up to $100 billion in a computer chip facility near Syracuse.
Those massive projects, along with some others, are drawing attention to the state's main east-west highway as a destination for economic development.
And a corporate site selection consultancy's report found that the upstate I-90 corridor, from Buffalo to Albany, stacks up well against its competitors when it comes to the annual cost of operating a manufacturing plant.
The Boyd Co. researched 30 high-tech corridors around the country, and explored the cost of operating a hypothetical 350,000-square-foot plant with 550 employees. The I-90 corridor – the only New York State area on the list – was rated seventh least expensive, at $42.8 million in annual operating costs. It was also the lowest-cost corridor in the Northeast.
The cheapest corridor on the list was in Central Texas, at $39.5 million, while the most expensive was in the San Francisco Bay area, at $53.6 million.
The study took a wider-lens view of economic development territories, focusing on corridors, instead of specific regions such as Buffalo or Rochester.
"In the site selection business today, advanced manufacturing site searches, it's all about identifying corridors," said John Boyd Jr., a partner in the Boyd Co.
With corridors, companies maximize their access to workforce, transportation, airports and support services.
"Because of all these factors, many site-seeking companies begin their search along a prominent interstate highway or public transit corridor," the study said.
Edwards will be positioned to support the Micron plant that will be located just a few hours' drive down the Thruway. And Edwards will build its plant at a Genesee County business site – the Science and Technology Advanced Manufacturing Park – that can draw workers from both the Buffalo and Rochester regions.
In the Boyd study, the corridor that ranked the cheapest for operating a plant – SH 130, between Austin and San Antonio – is where Samsung opted to build a $17 billion semiconductor plant. STAMP was identified as a contender for that project. In the study, the upstate New York corridor's total annual labor costs were $37.8 million, about 10% higher than the Central Texas corridor's.
The study also calculated the New York plant's annual electric power costs at about $587,000, and its natural gas costs at $1.1 million. By comparison, the Central Texas plant's electric costs were pegged at about $496,000, and its natural gas costs at only $490,000.
Boyd said both the New York and Texas corridors boast something many other corridors can't: proximity to an international border.
"It's a fundamental strength," he said.
Boyd said that fits with the push toward "nearshoring," or bringing manufacturing operations closer to home from overseas, amid concerns about supply chain disruptions.
Umicore has announced it will invest more than $1 billion in a facility in Kingston, Ontario, to make materials used in electric vehicle batteries. Boyd said New York State companies are well located to support that kind of plant. (Kingston is only about a couple of hours north of Syracuse largely via I-81 and this can apply to keeping the Bills in Buffalo due proximity to a high population concentration across the border)
"It's a day's truck drive," he said.
Incentives are no doubt a factor in helping secure big-dollar economic development projects, but ongoing operating costs remain an important consideration in the decisions, Boyd said. And not all suppliers are eligible to capture such big incentives.
"Incentives are key, but the true cost of doing business still are a major site selection factor," he said. (I.e.- available land and location)
Here is another article from February that mentions this corridor(inc. SUNY Poly), as well as one on Long Island(the L.I.E. Corridor):
https://www.evdesignandmanufacturing...ompany-report/
and the website for the company that did the study:
https://theboydcompany.com/site-selection/
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