The Schroeppel industrial park is expanding and upgrading to welcome more businesses. It just got a $8.1 million grant from NYS to improve its appeal
By Stefan Yablonski
The L. Michael Treadwell Oswego County Industrial Park off Route 481 in Schroeppel is FAST becoming a highly attractive location for many businesses.
New York awarded funding to the park under the Focused Attraction of Shovel-Ready Tracts New York (FAST NY) grant program. The Oswego County Industrial Development Agency will use the $8.1 million grant at the park for roadway improvements, water and sewer-capacity improvements, power and gas-capacity improvements and telecommunications service extensions.
“In the last few years, we weren’t out of space completely, but we were running out of space. We had about 15 acres, maybe a little bit more than that, of developable property,” said Austin Wheelock, Operation Oswego County executive director. “What we’ve seen in economic development in the last, say five years or so, is projects are getting bigger, more expensive. They need more access to utilities. We didn’t really have a good site that checked all those boxes.
“So we’ve been working on this since 2018 when we tried to acquire the site, 125 acres. That’s when we originally started to negotiate with the property owner. That took several years. We didn’t actually close on it, take possession of the property, until 2021.”
In 2022 there was this opportunity through the US Economic Administration called Build Back Better Regional Challenge, he said.
“We worked with multiple partners to put together a grant application at the time that would bring in infrastructure; level some of the sites, getting them ready, even building a couple pads for the first couple of businesses to go in,” Wheelock said. “Ultimately, we weren’t successful. But we had done a lot of the legwork to start thinking about what would the site be as a destination for one really large or multiple sort of advanced manufacturing supply chain companies or semiconductor supply chain companies.
“Then a few months later Micron announced [it would build a facility locally]. October 2022 was when Micron announced.
Preparing for the future
It made sense knowing what was coming on the horizon; what Central New York was positioning itself for, Wheelock said. Even before Micron there was momentum and opportunity, he added.
OOC worked with partners such as CenterState CEO and others within the region.
“We’d done this work to get this site, at least from a concept perspective, to be a contender. Now we really needed to push and get the funding to make this happen,” he said. “So at the time the IDA committed $2.5 million of their own dollars as matching dollars and went after state and federal grants.
“The first thing we did is we approached the EDA that had already received our application before and liked it — thought it was a good project, but ultimately being part of a regional application, it wasn’t successful. We cut down our ask. Originally our ask was like $10 million. Said we can fund the infrastructure, the road, the water and the sewer. That was the primary project. We got that to $5 million — $2.5 million IDA and $2.5 million from the EDA. (The U.S. Economic Development Administration awarded a $2.5 million grant.) We were successful, it took a while, but we were ultimately successful.”
OCO got the $2.5 million from the federal government knowing it would only cover road, water and sewer. But to have a fully shovel ready site you need to have electricity, gas and in this case a sub station to support the larger electrical users, Wheelock said. OCO put together all the other things that were there and were still about $7 million to $8 million short. It was going to be around a $13 million project.
“We put together a compelling proposal to Empire State Development through the FAST NY program. We knew this was a great fit — we just needed to get the other dollars then go to them and say, ‘your dollars are the last dollars,’” Wheelock explained. “We had to convince them that investing $7 million or $8 million in the park was a good financial decision for New York because at the end of the day there are a lot of locations that are trying to get these dollars and we are having to almost compete against some of our peer counties and areas across the state. You take a look and we are right in the center of everything. This is why you do this here, because it’s not just about Micron. It’s about us being central to a lot of investments in New York.”
Ultimately the Empire State Development funded 100% of what the gap of the project was, he said.
The improvements will provide 25 acres over four available sites, as well as 135 additional acres for development.
“We did a traffic study and said at some point we are going to have to increase the size of the [park’s] entrance,” he said. “The state said, ‘we really like this project — put it in the budget now because if this thing really pops you don’t want to have to wait for that funding to be able to increase the entrance.’”
In terms of what’s to come, they’re looking for a groundbreaking that’ll bring together all their partners in probably mid to late October.
Work will take place over the next two years; next spring into the summer of 2027.
“Obviously that could change a little bit. We want to have this done by the end of August, September 2027. Our goal is to make sure we have this ready before Micron is ready,” Wheelock said.
“The other important thing about having the state and federal funding is that it isn’t just the funding — they are now committed, financially committed, to a location in Oswego County. They’ll help us when it comes to the regulatory stuff. They’re financially invested in the site, so it is in their best interests to help us get through those things. We’re excited. It’s not just the funding, it’s the partnership.”
C&S
C&S Companies is the engineer on the project.
“At the end of August we were at 60% of final design … the contract drawings. So at the end of September going into October we are expecting our 90% drawings and then shortly after that we will then be going to bid. We are lining up our contactors for the project — get their sleeves rolled up and on the site,” he said. “We have been spending dollars, significant dollars, related to the engineering work. To do the detailed engineering, even before we had FAST NY money committed the project, we needed to move the project forward at least to a certain level of engineering so that also helps us to say, ‘hey we aren’t just sitting back and waiting for all the dollars to come in before we do anything.’”
