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Work continues at the site of the new Cree facility near Utica

Oneida County Executive Anthony J. Picente Jr. (second from left) and Empire State Development Chairman Howard Zemsky (right of Picente) look over site plans for Cree’s Mohawk Valley Fab at the Marcy Nanocenter site on Wednesday. (Photo provided by Oneida County)

MARCY, N.Y. — Work continues in Marcy on the new site for Cree Inc., the North Carolina firm that’s building a new facility at the Marcy Nanocenter site on the SUNY Polytechnic Institute campus.

Oneida County Executive Anthony Picente Jr., Empire State Development Chairman Howard Zemsky, and Cree officials on Wednesday toured the site to show Zemsky the progress on the firm’s Mohawk Valley fab facility.

Picente went over the site plans with Zemsky and showed him the preparation work on the structures’ foundations, which crews will focus on by the end of the month, Oneida County said in a Thursday news release.

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Durham, North Carolina–based Cree (NASDAQ: CREE) — a firm that manufactures power and radio frequency (RF) semiconductors, and lighting-class LEDs — plans to call its new wafer fabrication facility, “Mohawk Valley Fab.”

The “state-of-the-art, highly-automated” 200mm silicon carbide wafer fabrication facility will be the “first of its kind,” forecast to bring 614 jobs with an average salary of $75,000 to Oneida County.

An Empire State Development economic-analysis study found that over the next 20 years, the project is estimated to create 1,188 net new direct and indirect full-time jobs, 2,752 construction jobs during each year of construction, in excess of $232 million in new state and local tax revenue, and more than $4.3 billion in total statewide economic impact.

“Since the project’s announcement in September, it has been full speed ahead on getting this facility up and running and filling the hundreds of well-paying jobs that will come along with it,” Picente said in a Thursday news release. “Oneida County has been dedicated to supporting this site since day one, and our commitment continues as we give Cree all the tools it needs to be successful in this venture.”

Oneida County recently approved the issuance of up to $7 million in bonds to pay for a construction project to improve access to the site through the SUNY-Marcy Parkway. Between the county, Mohawk Valley EDGE and the State of New York, more than $100 million in infrastructure improvements have been made for the nanocenter.

Earlier this month, the project’s general contractor Exyte U.S. submitted a site plan to the Town of Marcy that calls for three primary buildings to be located on the 56.25 acres at the northern end of the 398-acre Nanocenter site. The buildings are expected to be finished and ready for the installation of tools by April 2021.

The site also has room for two more fabrication facilities, which Cree has “expressed interest in exploring,” Oneida County said.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com

 

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