Park positions the region to attract new employers and capitalize on growing opportunities in advanced manufacturing and semiconductor supply chain industries
By Stefan Yablonski
Opportunity in Oswego County has been heating up the past several years. Now it is set to boil over.
Earlier this summer, the County of Oswego Industrial Development Agency broke ground on the L. Michael Treadwell Oswego County Industrial Park expansion in the town of Schroeppel. It expanded the county’s industrial development capacity and positioned the region to attract new employers and capitalize on growing opportunities in advanced manufacturing and semiconductor supply chain industries, according to Austin Wheelock, CEO of the County of Oswego IDA and executive director of Operation Oswego County.
“With a new industrial park, you need to have a road, infrastructure — everything like that before you can have tenants in there. We are talking to multiple entities right now, they want to know exactly when things will be done before they can make their plans,” Wheelock said. “We aren’t doing this without having interest in the park; but some of that is still to come. I would say maybe later this year or next year.”
“The way that we work — we don’t work on speculation, if somebody came to us and said they wanted to buy land speculatively, we would not be interested. We would have to know exactly what they are looking to do and when they are going to do it, what they’re going to create. We wouldn’t be interested if somebody just said we want to buy 10 acres in there. When we deal with projects, we need to have a very defined project and what it is going to be,” he explained. “But certainly, conversations are going on right now and there could be some in the near future that are ready to go out.”
185-acre expansion
The expansion adds 185 acres to the 135-acre industrial park.
“The way it is currently laid out is that there are 10 shovel–ready sites that will be developed. That certainly could change if somebody, rather large, came and said, ‘you know we’d like a piece of that property, 40 to 50 or more acres.’ — that could change the amount of sites overall,” he said. “But the plan would still be the same in terms of developing the whole site.”
Site work starts
In July, the IDA awarded W.D. Malone Trucking & Excavating of Hannibal an $8.5 million contract to expand the park.
“Malone is getting mobilized right now [end of August]. They have already put in orders for certain items, some of the pipe and other things like that that take months to get. A significant amount of work is going to be taking place this fall over there and then wrapping up next summer,” Wheelock said. “They have already got some equipment down here at the site. They have ordered a lot of the materials and things that will be going in the ground and getting ready to put in several months of work here before winter comes.”
Malone will be putting in new roads, digging trenches to drop in new private and public infrastructure, installing sewer and doing some grading on sites to make them a little more useable out the gate, Wheelock explained.
National Grid is responsible for putting in new natural gas pipelines and infrastructure and putting in a new substation as well to support the electricity needs of the new users, he added.
“There is a lot of excitement. A lot of that is related to Micron. But there are other things going on as well. Oswego County is in good position as related to new nuclear and we are working on many other initiatives,” Wheelock said. “Now that Novelis is back up and running there is growth there. So, there are a lot of opportunities right now in both Oswego County and Central New York. A lot of the activity that most everybody knows of is related to Micron — but there are a lot of things going on throughout the county and the region that makes us poised for growth. You’ve got the largest project ever in Micron at our southern border and the potential for a new nuclear plant on the shores of Lake Ontario — everything in between has a lot of opportunity. That is opportunity of impressive growth.”
Projects supporting projects
“When we are looking at projects and we are looking at how we assist things, we are looking at a lot of characteristics. Is it a minority–owned, women–owned, is it a project that supports not just the jobs it creates but an additional industry that we want to see grow? There are all sorts of things that you look at on a case-by-case basis for a project,” Wheelock explained. “First and foremost, we look at it as a great place for manufacturing, advanced manufacturing, that could be related to the semiconductor supply chain or to other industries that we have here. We want to bring in logistic operations that could support the semiconductor industry but also support some of our existing industries or industries that make sense here that maybe we don’t have fully developed yet, and other kinds of research and development companies.
“We are not painting ourselves into a corner of ‘it has to be this or that or else.’ Those things are priorities, but we will also look at things that aren’t maybe necessarily known as a priority on a case-by-case basis. We’re taking a proactive approach to ensure Oswego County is ready to capitalize on what is truly a generational opportunity for Central New York and to compete for the next wave of advanced manufacturing investment.”
