Buffalo News: Upstate is getting some Cuomo love

Buffalo News: Upstate is getting some Cuomo love

Published:
Sunday, October 18, 2015 - 09:05
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When Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo stops in Buffalo, he loves to talk about how, when he travels across upstate New York, politicians elsewhere always ask about his Buffalo Billion economic development initiative.

And the governor says they always ask when their community will be getting its billion dollars.

Cuomo likes to tell the story here because it underscores how his administration singled out Buffalo early on for special attention after decades of economic decline.

Now, with the state pumping $750 million into the SolarCity solar panel factory and hundreds of millions more into a smattering of other projects to spur growth in the technology and medical sectors and train the workers needed to fill those promised jobs, other parts of upstate are starting to get a hefty piece of the state’s economic development pie.

“You’re seeing projects announced throughout upstate, along the Thruway corridor,” said Brian McMahon, the executive director of the New York State Economic Development Council in Albany.

• The $700 million plant in the Town of Alabama, near Batavia, that 1366 Technologies plans to build to make silicon wafers for solar panels is the latest example to the state’s growing investment across upstate.

To land the wafer plant, the state and Genesee County are putting up $97 million in incentives, including low-cost hydropower and a factory that will be built using state grant money and leased to the company for 10 years.

The plant will be built in phases, but if 1366 Technologies’ low-cost wafers find a receptive market among solar panel manufacturers, it could bring as many as 1,000 new jobs to the rural site, which is part of the Western New York Science and Technology Advanced Manufacturing Park, or WNY STAMP, which received $33 million in Buffalo Billion funding to make the land ready for development.

• In late August, it was Utica’s turn, with the announcement that General Electric Co. and Austrian tech firm AMS AG will pump more than $2 billion into new semiconductor chip fabrication facilities in a pair of projects that promise to bring more than 2,000 jobs to the Mohawk Valley. The state has pledged to invest $250 million to build and buy key equipment for AMS’ chip plant and GE’s research lab.

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