Syracuse, N.Y. — Micron Technology Inc. this week filed its long-anticipated application for property tax breaks that are expected to total nearly $300 million for a huge semiconductor fabrication facility planned for Clay.
State officials have previously said the deal will require the company to make nearly $85 million in payments in lieu of taxes during the agreement’s 49-year term. That would mean an estimated property tax savings of almost $284 million for the company on the proposed $100 billion complex.
The company’s 30-page application to the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency, which became public today, lacks the same level of detail compared with documents released by the state nine months ago.
That’s because the details are being updated to include Micron’s recent purchases of two properties to add to the 1,400-acre White Pine Commerce Park off Route 31, County Executive Ryan McMahon told syracuse.com | The Post-Standard.
That means this week’s application does not include a payment schedule. Nor does it detail Micron’s expected savings compared with what it would pay if the planned $100 billion complex was fully taxed.
It also does not include estimates of what the company will save from exemptions from state and local sales taxes on construction materials and furnishings.
Though short on details of the tax agreement, the application is a significant step in what Micron has said will be the largest semiconductor fabrication facility in U.S. history, creating up to 50,000 jobs at White Pine and at supply chain companies that will want to locate nearby.
Overall, the company’s payments and projected savings will be close to what the state disclosed in October shortly after Micron announced it had selected Clay for the project, McMahon said. The land additions will make the company’s payments, as well as its savings, slightly higher than those disclosed by the state, he said.
The payments will go to the town of Clay, the North Syracuse Central School District and the county. According to the state, Micron would pay a little more than $1 million in property taxes in the first year of the deal, a savings of nearly $3.5 million for the company. The payments would rise each year, topping out at nearly $2.7 million in year 49.
Those relatively low payments for a $100 billion investment are by design. The goal, McMahon said, is for Micron to bring high-paying jobs and drive other business and property development to the county, rather than rely on the computer chipmaker to take on a large piece of the local tax burden.
“We’re not going to be making money on property taxes on this,” McMahon said. “We’re going to be making money on economic growth.”
In addition to those annual payments to local governments and schools, Micron will pay the development agency an upfront project fee of a little more than $25 million, McMahon said.
The fee will pay for the agency’s staff time and consultant fees and help fund its efforts to draw related supply chain companies to the area, including land purchases the agency has begun making directly across Route 31 from White Pine, he said.
The county’s industrial development agency is scheduled to meet publicly with Micron representatives at 8:30 a.m. Thursday at the Oncenter.
McMahon said an updated payment schedule under the negotiated tax deal will not be ready for Thursday’s meeting but should be ready for the agency’s meeting next month.
The tax deal would be the largest in the county’s history, but so would Micron’s development project.
The company said it expects the project to create 4,500 construction jobs, with 1,300 of those being filled by workers from Cayuga, Cortland, Madison, Oneida, Onondaga and Oswego counties.
Micron said the project will employ 4,680 people at the site upon completion of the first two fabrication facilities. When the second two fabs are completed, the site will employ 9,000 people, it said.
The company said previously that jobs at the plant will pay an average of more than $100,000 a year. Its application to the development agency provides more detail, listing average pay for technicians as $68,600, engineers $94,800, manufacturing support personnel $154,759, and managers and executives $166,000.
McMahon said Micron’s tax break application to the county triggers the start of a project-specific environmental impact study that the development agency will lead. Before Micron selected Clay for its project, the development agency prepared a generic environmental impact study based on a smaller project.
Construction cannot begin until the new study is completed, he said. Such a study will include a look at the project’s impact on traffic and recommend roadway improvements to ease potential congestion.
“This is a pretty important milestone in the process,” McMahon said.
The county has previously said Micron will pay the development agency $30 million for the White Pine site. However, the agency will be required to reinvest money from the sale into the project site.
McMahon said the county’s position — which he said is subject to change — is that it will sell the land in two stages, the first being 843 acres for the development’s first phase and the rest of the park for the second phase.
He said some site clearing could start this year, with construction beginning in 2024.
In its application, Micron said it intends to submit a site plan to the town in June next year and anticipates receiving the town’s approval three months later. The application includes a draft site plan for the project’s first phase.
Micron Technology Inc. filed this draft site plan with the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency for the first phase of its planned $100 billion semiconductor fabrication center at the northeast corner of Route 31 and Caughdenoy Road in Clay. The first phase will consist of two fabrication plants and multiple support buildings. Micron Technology
Micron said in its application that it expects the plant to begin production of memory chips in December 2026. The company said the chips will be used in a wide variety of modern electronic products, including:
- Consumer electronics such as mobile phones and personal computers.
- Medical devices and other health care technology.
- Automobiles, which it said are becoming “data centers on wheels” as advanced driving systems become the norm.
- Military hardware from fighter jets to combat vehicles to aircraft carriers to submarines.
- IT and data center applications, and communications networks for 5G and beyond.
- Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning.
The company said it intends to invest about $100 billion over the next 20 years to build a “leading edge” semiconductor manufacturing complex at White Pine.
When fully built out, the facility will be the largest semiconductor manufacturing center in the U.S., according to Micron.
The numbers are staggering.
The complex will be built in two phases, with two fabs being constructed in each phase, according to Micron’s application.
Each fab will occupy about 1.2 million square feet of land and contain 600,000 square feet of cleanroom space, 290,000 square feet of cleanroom support space and 250,000 square feet of administrative space, the company said.
The cleanrooms alone will total 2.4 million square feet of space – the size of 40 football fields. Cleanrooms are manufacturing spaces where air temperature and quality are highly controlled. Micron’s will be supported by a series of systems, including chilled water, air handlers, electrical substations, switch gear and compressed dry air systems, and the installation of thousands of pieces of semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
In addition, two sets of support facilities housed in separate buildings will be constructed, each consisting of a 360,000-square-foot central utility building, 200,000 square feet of warehouse space and 200,000 square feet of product testing space, Micron said.
The company said it plans to construct the second two fabs about 10 years after completion of the first two. McMahon said the exact timing of the second phase will depend on market demand for the company’s memory chips. However, he said he believes the second phase could start earlier than is described in the document.
Micron said its investments in Clay and at a smaller semiconductor facility it is building in its hometown of Boise, Idaho, will raise the global percentage of DRAM — a type of fast computer memory — manufactured in the U.S. from 2% to 12% over the next 20 years. The first two fabs in Clay will be enough to supply the most critical needs of the U.S. market, it said.
Micron is the fourth largest semiconductor company in the world and the only U.S.-based manufacturer of digital memory. Its products are sold under the Micron and Crucial brand names. It reported revenues of nearly $31 billion in 2022.
Onondaga County is not the only government providing tax incentives for the Micron project. The state of New York has agreed to provide up to $5.5 billion in Excelsior Jobs Program tax credits to Micron over 20 years if the company meets its hiring goals in Clay.
The company is eligible to apply for up to $3 billion in grants and subsidies, plus a 25% investment tax credit, under the federal Chips and Science Act. Details on that are expected by the end of the year.
Micron Technology Inc. is planning to build a $100 billion semiconductor plant at White Pine Commerce Park in Clay. (Rick Moriarty | rmoriarty@syracuse.com)
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