On Friday, Oneida County Industrial Development Agency directors agreed to consider incentives to support the project at the Marcy Nanocenter. Requested are a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement, and sales and mortgage recording tax exemptions. Commonly called a PILOT, the payment agreement will follow a previously approved template. It establishes what goes to the taxing jurisdictions and what money goes into development for the project. This agreement was modeled after what was used at GlobalFoundries in Malta, in Saratoga County.

Meanwhile, preliminary work is progressing at the Marcy Nanocenter site selected by Austria-based AMS AG for a 360,000-square-foot wafer fab. To be constructed by Fort Schuyler Management Corp., the development will include office buildings and support space.

Construction is expected to start next March or April, said Steven DiMeo, Mohawk Valley EDGE president, on Friday. EDGE has been developing and promoting the site — in hopes of attracting a computer chip manufacturer since the late 1990s. The end result is portrayed as a new and bright future for Oneida County and the region.

This will be the first fab going into the 428-acre site, which is large enough to accommodate three plants and a research and development or packaging facility.

DiMeo said the timeline calls for the facility to be turned over to AMS in the third quarter of 2017 with commercial production underway by the following March. When the facility is in full production, AMS anticipates having 740 direct employees. Temporary construction employment is expected to top out at 1,000 workers.

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[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="749"] ROAD CONSTRUCTION — A road is being built around the edge of the Marcy Nanocenter at the western edge of the SUNY Polytechnic Institute campus to allow access to sections of the 428-acre site. It was announced in August that a computer chip plant for AMS AG will be built starting next year. (Sentinel photo by John Clifford)[/caption]