June 11, 2009 Earthmovers readied at chip fab site Earthmovers readied at chip fab site
By LARRY RULISON, Business writer
MALTA -- GlobalFoundries Inc. purchased nearly 223 acres of land Wednesday at the Luther Forest Technology Campus in one of the most anticipated real estate closings ever for the Capital Region.
The price? About $7.8 million, or $35,000 an acre.
That's a discount on the land that was negotiated as part of the state's $1.2 billion incentive package for the project, which was first announced three years ago this month.
"We are ecstatic here," said Michael Relyea, president of the Luther Forest Technology Campus Economic Development Corp., the nonprofit that owns the former logging forest being transformed into a business park. "We are very excited about where we are going in the future."
Relyea's remarks were made at a special ceremony at the Hyatt Place hotel in Malta. Just an hour before, the closing had taken place at Saratoga National Bank on South Broadway in Saratoga Springs.
Next week, giant earthmovers from The Delaney Group of Gloversville will begin rumbling onto the site to begin clearing the land of trees and roots, all in anticipation of an official groundbreaking for the 1.3 million-square-foot factory in late July.
Construction of the building is expected to cost $800 million and take up to two years and 1,600 workers. After that, the shell will be outfitted with sophisticated manufacturing tools used to print integrated circuits onto 12-inch silicon wafers that will later be cut into computer chips.
GlobalFoundries expects the tools to be installed by 2011, with full-production ready sometime in 2012.
As part of the incentive package, the state is providing $650 million, money that is expected to begin flowing to the project by the fourth quarter this year.
Many local, political and business leaders attended Wednesday's event at the Hyatt. None was more inspired, it appeared, than Paul Sausville, the Malta town supervisor.
As part of its agreement with the town, GlobalFoundries is giving Malta $4 million for community projects. Sausville said he believes the chip manufacturing plant will also have a profound effect on the town's psyche.
"We have here today the confluence of some big, big plans," he said. "Home is more than just bricks and mortar, roads and roundabouts. We have before us a magical moment to stir our blood so we can create richer lives for our children."
Later in the afternoon, about 30 miles south on the Northway, M+W Zander, the architect, engineer and construction manager for the GlobalFoundries project, hosted a job fair at the University at Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. More than 400 people attended, many of them excited about the Luther Forest project.
One of them was Bonnie Netkin, who moved back home only two weeks ago after losing her job at an architecture and construction firm in Las Vegas. The 28-year-old graduate of Shaker High School said she was in the Nevada city for seven years and had known about plans for the chip fab. She is hoping to get a document-control job with M+W Zander, one of 40 positions the company was offering.
"I had heard about it (the Malta project)," she said. "But I didn't realize it was happening so soon. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I haven't see too much out there."
Rick Whitney, chief executive officer of M+W Zander's U.S. operations, said the German company was actually holding the job fair for a number of regional projects: not just with GlobalFoundries but also with General Electric Co., IBM Corp., Tokyo Electron and the NanoCollege. M+W Zander built the college's recent $150 expansion project and also built the other buildings at the $4.5 billion complex on Fuller Road.
"This is a great day for the region," Whitney told the massive crowd that was huddled shoulder-to-shoulder around him under one of the NanoCollege's giant rotundas. "We want to ensure you there's a lot of opportunities here."
Larry Rulison can be reached at 454-5504 or by e-mail at lrulison@timesunion.com.
GlobalFoundries expects the tools to be installed by 2011, with full-production ready sometime in 2012.
