By Mary Beth Roach
The proposed Micron chip fabrication plant in the town of Clay has the potential of launching a new industrial revolution and with that comes the potential for housing and commercial development revolutions as well.
The real estate signs along the Route 31 corridor, through the town of Clay, foreshadow that kind of development.
“The anticipation of the Micron development has fueled both direct and indirect development opportunities, be they buyers and other types of occupants that would look for the influx of residents and activity in that area,” according to John FitzGibbons of FitzGibbons Real Estate, based in Oswego.
The company has about 20 acres for sale on Route 31, near Henry Clay Boulevard. The area, Fitzgibbons said, lends itself to industrial, commercial and institutional usage.
With the impending plans for Micron, he sees accelerated development in that area and heightened prosperity and activity to benefit the northern part of Onondaga and southern part of Oswego County.
Various real estate websites, such as Zillow and Landsearch.com, show properties with a wide range of prices and most list its proximity to the Micron site as an asset. Calculations for many of the properties on the market range from $21,400 to $186,000 per acre and some have existing structures on them.
Many of the real estate signs along that stretch of Route 31 belong to Cushman-Wakefield and Pyramid Brokerage is an alliance member of that firm. Steve Scuderi, president of Pyramid Brokerage, said that his company has about 300 to 400 acres for sale.
The interest, he explained, really depends on the site and parcel, since much of the property doesn’t yet have public utilities, like sewers.
“For someone to come in and build apartments, you really need public utilities. When and capacity is still sort of question mark. We have transacted a few sites that don’t have sewers and sold to users who are willing to sit on it and wait until that happens,” he said.
Scuderi also noted that media coverage does a lot to heighten the appeal. When Micron first made their plans for the Clay location public, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that generated a lot of interest, he explained. Although that may have died down a bit, he anticipates that will pick up again.
For sellers and buyers, Scuderi offered some advice. Sellers, he suggested, should educate themselves “on the development feasibility of their property; availability of public utilities to their property, existence of any wetlands, and lastly knowing the amount of time it can take a purchaser to conduct due diligence and obtain entitlements.”
Buyers, he said, need to have “the determination to stomach the current volatility of the market and having educated expectations on the amount of time and resources it can take to get a project engineered and approved.”
And to underscore FitzGibbons’ statement, there is an expected massive influx of residents.
Today, Clay has the biggest population of any town in the county, with 60,527, according to the 2020 Census, and in his recent State of the County address, Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said that the development and the support businesses could attract 75,000 to 200,000 residents to the general area.
This is becoming a destination, according to Mark Re, vice president and regional manager of the Central New York/Northern New York regions of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services.
With regard to the housing market, Re pointed to a Zillow report that home values in the county have climbed more than 64% between 2020 and 2024.
Zillow also noted that among more than 3,000 counties that it has data on, the county’s home value growth was in the top 3%.
He said he has spoken with professionals who are relocating from Texas, Virginia and North and South Carolina to Central New York for one reason — Micron.
According to neighborhoodscout group.com, Clay is “one of the highest appreciating communities in the nation for the latest quarter and may signal the town’s near-future real estate investment strength.”
RedFin.com sees the Clay housing market as very competitive. In February 2025, it said the median sale price of a home in Clay was $298,000, up 15.5% compared to last year.
The stats would indicate that the revolution Ulatowski predicted is already underway.
