I wanted to share with you the following article by the Utica Observer-Dispatch:

Posted Aug. 23, 2015 at 5:30 AM | Elizabeth Cooper

Thursday’s transformational announcement that two nanotechnology companies are landing in Marcy was years in the making.

Details gleaned from officials involved in the plans, and from the companies themselves tell a tale of the convergence of four distinct sets of interests.

But the story heated up over the past year.

* The Mohawk Valley had been trying to attract a nano chip manufacturer for 15 years.

* The state of New York and Gov. Andrew Cuomo had been working to create a technology corridor along the old Erie Canal route.

* General Electric had been developing new silicon carbide power electronics chip technology and was ready to move on to adapting it for use in military and commercial applications.

* Austria-based AMS had experienced strong growth and was looking for a new production facility.

The technology corridor is the centerpiece of Cuomo’s plans to revitalize the Upstate economy.

“What we are looking for is the industries of the 21st Century that are competitive in business, and demonstrate that they are going to be successful in New York for years and years and years to come,” said Alain Kaloyeros, who is viewed as the mastermind behind the technology corridor. “We want to avoid the mistake of having a company set up shop for a couple of years and leave.”

General Electric, with its global reach and cutting-edge technologies, is just the kind of company they were looking for.

The company was late to join the research and development center at SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Albany campus, because the research there was focused on computer chips.

“But SUNY Poly started looking more broadly, and we started to see more synergies,” said Danielle Merfeld, GE’s Global Technology Director for Electrical Technologies and Systems.

In July 2014, GE agreed to spearhead a consortium formed to research and develop the power electronics technology at SUNY Poly’s Albany complex.

And in late fall 2014, Cuomo approached GE about coming to Marcy, to launch the next stage of its silicon carbide research and development.

GE jumped at the opportunity. Merfeld said the fact that the Quad-C building already was well on the way to completion made it very appealing.

“It lowers the barriers,” she said. “It makes it easier for us to start quickly. Now we just bring in the technology and the know-how.”

Chip fab

The drive to find a chip fabrication plant for Marcy was heating up at the same time.

Around Christmas of 2014, Mohawk Valley EDGE President Steve DiMeo, who has been spearheading the area’s marketing of the Marcy site for more than 15 years, heard AMS was looking for a fab.

The company had seen growth of more than 20 percent per year in three of the last four years, and wanted to increase production.

They already had one fab in Austria, and worked with some foundries – where multiple companies produce chips in the same building – but it wasn’t enough, said company CEO Kirk Laney.

“We set out looking for other fab assets over the last two years, searching and trying to identify the ideal scenario for the company going forward,” he said.

DiMeo sent AMS a one-page outline of what New York had been doing to create public-private partnerships with technology companies, and details about the Marcy site. They bit.

Then came phone calls, and a trip to Austria for DiMeo, other EDGE officials, and representatives from M&W, the firm that is overseeing construction at the Quad-C.

In April, AMS officials came to Marcy to view the site in person, and liked what they saw.

Laney said AMS had looked in Asia and Europe, and also elsewhere in the U.S., but the research synergies at SUNY Poly were unbeatable and the company wanted to be part of it.

“Texas does some very attractive things to bring in business,” he said. “But there is not this caliber of research and process development in nanotechnology.”

The admiration was mutual. The sensor and analog technology AMS is developing is at the cutting edge of the semiconductor industry.

“It is a great company, it really is,” Kaloyeros said. “It is going to be the next Intel or the next Samsung.”

And what’s next for the Mohawk Valley? Kaloyeros said the area hasn’t seen its last big announcement. Not that what’s already coming is anything to sneeze at.

“This is really Andrew Cuomo’s Mohawk Valley Billion,” he said, referring to the Buffalo Billion state financial boost for Buffalo.