Could the North Country get its Micron moment?

The North Country appears as if it could be the next region to see a boom from the arrival of Micron in New York.

Economic development organizations, elected officials and political appointees have made a bid for pieces of the Micron supply chain on behalf of the region. A 45-page pitch document local leaders created for Micron bills the region as the place “where innovation meets opportunity.” Micron has met several times with an economic development agency from Jefferson County and gave $750,000 to Jefferson Community College to help grow new jobs in the semiconductor industry. 

The region’s state legislature representatives attended Micron’s recent concrete pour in Clay. Micron’s foundation included Jefferson and Lewis counties in the list of counties where it plans to give money to savings accounts for children. 

“When you think about where all these jobs will be, it is that broader kind of area,” said Rosita Najmi, the executive director of the Micron Foundation, who oversees the company’s social and community impact. 

New York State Assemblyman Scott Gray, a Republican representing parts of Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties, laid out the pitch to Micron in the introduction to the 45-page pitch document:

The region has a lower cost of living than nearly anywhere else in the state, with median home sale prices around $60,000 cheaper in Jefferson County than Onondaga County. The region has several crossings into Canada. The St. Lawrence River provides convenient routes to northern European shipping lanes. Foreign trade zones in the area allow companies to defer and reduce tariffs. Fort Drum holds a large population of young veterans looking for work as they exit specialized roles in the army.

The North Country is also close. 

“It would take less time, potentially, to get to Clay from southern Jefferson County than it would to get to Clay from southern Syracuse,” said Marshall Weir, the CEO of Jefferson County Economic Development. JCED is the county’s industrial development agency.

Micron has shown interest. Micron representatives have met with JCED a few times since committing to moving to Clay, said Weir.

Aparna Rau, a Micron spokesperson, confirmed that Micron has and plans to continue to engage with leaders from the region to talk about supply chain investment and co-location opportunities in the North Country. 

Jefferson County’s relationship with Micron is being negotiated with help from Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon and the county’s industrial development agency, said Weir. Jefferson County is receiving help from Syracuse-based consultant firm Strategic Development Services, he said. 

“I’m sure you can tell how I’m trying to dance around this a little bit, because obviously Onondaga County is worried about Onondaga County,” said Weir, after telling Central Current that he was willing to bend over backwards to help Onondaga County with Micron. “But we just want to maintain our visibility to them and help in any way we can with this moving forward.” 

The region has no plans to step on Onondaga County’s toes, said Weir and Gray. It is possible that all the growth would be indirect, they said. 

McMahon said he anticipated almost all the growth from Micron being in Onondaga County. 

“It’d be hard for them to step on our toes because we have been preparing for this and investing in this since 2019,” said McMahon. “But I think at some point, as our land becomes more scarce with infrastructure, that naturally those communities, if they have sites, will be very competitive.” 

Donations

When Micron announced its move to Central New York, it made a commitment to a five-county region — Onondaga County and the four counties bordering it. 

That region is expanding. Recent donations show that Micron considers four more counties — Oneida, Albany, Lewis, and Jefferson — to be its home turf. 

As the North Country attempts to draw in Micron, it has one thing in particular going for it: Fort Drum. 

Earlier this year, Micron gave $750,000 to Jefferson Community College with the purpose of developing a pathway for veterans exiting their stationing at Fort Drum and their families to semiconductor careers. 

Fort Drum is home to the 10th Mountain Division of the U.S. Army, the most deployed division in the branch since 2001. The military reservation is about eight miles from downtown Watertown and about 70 miles from Micron’s planned plant in Clay. 

In the pitch document, Michael McFadden, the executive director of Advocate Drum called the division “one of the most technically and tactically proficient military formations in our armed services.” 

Around 3,600 veterans depart service annually, McFadden wrote, many of them STEM educated officers and their spouses. One-third of them plan to stay in the area, and another third are considering staying, depending on the job market, McFadden wrote, citing recent studies. 

That $750,000 donation counted toward Micron’s Community Investment Fund commitment, Micron’s $250 million pledge to give money back to Central New York. 

In 2022, Micron made a promise: In exchange for billions in state tax incentives, it will spend at least $250 million on projects across Central New York. The state government will give an additional $100 million.  An additional amount will be fundraised to create a $500 million Community Investment Fund for the region.

Empire State Development is the state government agency in charge of determining which Micron projects count toward their commitment. To make their decisions, they compare contributions to a memorandum of understanding signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul and Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra in October 2022 and to a Community Priorities Document created by consultations with 12,000 Central New Yorkers across the five CNY counties.

“The supermajority of that money will be spent in Onondaga County,” said McMahon. While noting that Micron would choose how it spent its own money, he said that he anticipated between 90% to 95% of the CIF money flowing directly to Onondaga County.

The vast majority of the CIF money will go to the original five counties, said a spokesperson at ESD. But there are no restrictions that enforce geographic boundaries on Micron’s giving. The program is designed with the flexibility to support programs in any communities directly impacted by Micron’s arrival, an ESD spokesperson said. 

“We don’t start with the dollar amount. We start with the outcome,” said Najmi. “It’s related often to the business, because you have to justify the spend — whether it’s corporate dollars or foundation dollars — but it’s always about, okay, what’s the opportunity? What is the problem you’re trying to solve?” 

Deloitte consultants anticipated that there would be a 1 million person shortage of semiconductor workers globally by 2030, Najmi said. 

Micron is trying to grow the population of potential semiconductor workers before the plant opens, Najmi said. The company has already hired some upstate New Yorkers, moved them to its other plants, and plans to move them back when the Clay facility is ready. But having a big enough workforce to support the plant requires investing in education for people from a broad region. 

Micron recently made additional donations to two North Country counties. 

On June 30, Micron pledged to donate to children in seven states, mostly in areas that they thought would see a significant impact from their operations. Micron announced a significant donation to children in Central New York: every child with a Trump Account in the counties of Onondaga, Oswego, Cortland, Cayuga, and Madison would get $250 from the company.

Days later, Micron expanded the boundaries, adding four more counties: now, kids in Jefferson, Lewis, Oneida, and Albany counties would also get the money. The expansion added about 135,000 children and $34 million to the total commitment in New York State. The four counties were not included on the original list because of a clerical error, said a Micron spokesperson.

Micron has not asked ESD if the donations to the Trump Accounts can be included in their investment fund giving, said an ESD spokesperson. An ESD spokesperson declined to speculate on whether Micron would ask in the future and also clarified that Albany County did not count as CNY for the purposes of the CIF.

Housing and construction

Politicians in the North Country are betting that people working on multiple phases of the Micron project will want to live in the region. That may include people employed in the plant or those building it, said Weir and Gray said. 

Micron’s Project Labor Agreement for the construction of the megafab is with the Central-Northern New York Building and Construction Trades Council, meaning that union workers from the North Country can be involved in construction alongside Central New Yorkers, Rau said. 

JCED is working on trying to build housing in the southern part of the county near the border with Oswego, Weir said. They are hoping to build new housing in the next year or two, he said, adding that they had seen interest from developers. They are hoping to get financial support from ESD, he said. 

Watertown Mayor Sarah Pierce wrote in a letter included in the pitch document the city has “avowed itself as a pro-housing community.”

Legislator Maurice “Mo” Brown commended them. Housing built in Jefferson County could decrease pressure on Onondaga County’s housing market, “especially with our leaders struggling to address” housing issues, Brown said.

“If those people live in Jefferson or Oswego County, that means they aren’t living in my house,” Brown said. 

Weir is hoping to attract businesses that do not need to be too close to Micron, including businesses that may only need to make weekly deliveries to the company’s campus.

McMahon said that to house the supply chain, the county had White Pine Commercial Park but also was closing in on acquiring other industrial parks. Supply chain companies in Arizona pay millions of dollars per acre to be close to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, McMahon said. 

Jefferson County has its own 89-acre industrial park, which the county is hoping to expand to about 200 acres. The park predates Micron and has sewers and electricity installed. A variety of companies could be housed there, whether they are outer tier pieces of the Micron supply chain, companies displaced by rising prices in Onondaga County or companies that have nothing to do with Micron at all, Weir said. 

Weir anticipates that some Onondaga County businesses, pushed out by rising real estate costs, might relocate to pre-existing satellite companies in the North Country. He declined to give examples. 

McMahon said his interactions with Jefferson County had mostly been using the lessons Onondaga County had learned to try to teach them and other counties to attract their own major projects. He said he’d given North Country leaders the “playbook” on how to attract investment.

“The reality is, everyone wants to know how we did this, right?” said McMahon.

Energy

Micron needs energy.

The North Country is home to two potential sites for new energy projects and several key decisionmakers in state energy conversations. 

Hochul has directed the New York Power Authority to develop five gigawatts of nuclear power to reach rising energy needs. Mehrotra has lent his support to Hochul’s effort and provided a supportive statement for a press release issued by Hochul’s office when she directed NYPA to develop a nuclear power plant.  

Gray is the ranking minority member of the assembly energy committee and was on his way to New York City for the opening of Hadron Energy, a modular nuclear energy company[LR1] , on the NASDAQ when Central Current spoke to him. 

“We have people that want to produce power,” Gray said. “We have capability of moving power once we produce it, too. So critical things, right?”

The North Country is also a major source of hydropower. The St. Lawrence tumbles through the region, producing power at the Moses-Saunders Power Dam in Massena, New York. The hydro plant’s ownership is split between New York and Ontario, Canada.

The army has selected Fort Drum as a potential site for a nuclear plant. As Hochul looks to build a nuclear plant somewhere upstate, she has selected Massena, in St. Lawrence County, as a potential site. 

The region also has political capital in making major energy decisions. Two of its assembly members and a state senator sit on energy committees for their respective branches. New York’s deputy secretary of energy, Sean Ewart, is from St. Lawrence County, just north of Jefferson. 

Gray said that there were general supply and reliability issues with New York energy to begin with, and between Micron and Fort Drum, there was going to be a significant increase in demand, adding to those issues. 

The energy sector is one of the primary reasons he was heavily involved in Micron, Gray said. 

“Just trying to bring the energy supply for the state up,” said Gray. “So that’s one of my focuses and it’s been one of my focuses, and we’ve been leading a lot of efforts to get nuclear off the ground.”