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Cuomo to announce $225 million high-tech, clean-energy development in Buffalo
by chocieniIn
the largest down payment on his Buffalo billion-dollar commitment, Gov. Andrew
M. Cuomo this morning will announce the creation of a clean-energy research
campus on 90 acres of land along the Buffalo River that will include two
initial tenants moving from California to create 850 jobs.
The RiverBend project calls for $225 million in state funding to build the
first of six buildings on a brownfield site that Cuomo administration officials
believe will become the center of some of the nation's leading clean and green
energy research.
"It's the initiation of an industry,'' said a senior Cuomo administration
official who spoke with The Buffalo News on condition of anonymity.
The project will be run by the State University of New York's Research
Foundation, which is headquartered in Albany, and has the help from top
officials at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, the State
University of New York's newest college, which has become a major source of
jobs in Albany with its focus the past two decades on nanoscience research.
"If it's just 850 jobs, that's great. But we believe it could be for Western
New York what nano was for the Capital District,'' the administration official
said Wednesday night.
The first two tenants in the first of six planned buildings are being lured,
like those in Albany to the nanoscale facility, with the promise that the state
will provide the space and expensive equipment that they could not otherwise
afford on their own to do cutting-edge research in the field of clean energy.
Officials say the model works because companies, once they locate, find it
difficult to leave because they cannot replicate a facility with so much
expensive equipment upon which research is conducted. In Albany, the nanoscale
center has attracted a who's who of computer chip makers and other high-tech
firms from around the world.
"One of the things that built Buffalo, literally, was the availability of
low-cost energy, and clean energy and the technology of clean energy is a
growth industry,'' the Cuomo administration officials said.
Cuomo vowed in 2012 to pump in an extra $1 billion in state money over several
years to try to provide an economic rebirth in Buffalo, which he said has been
ignored for too long by the state.
"The premise of the Buffalo billion was to develop an economic strategy that
builds on the strengths of Buffalo. You identify the strengths, you then build
on rock and the strengths are the rock,'' the administration official said.
"This is a very cool, big thing,'' the source added of Thursday's announcement.
Speaking in Adam's Mark Hotel this morning, the governor will flesh out a
proposal, first made last month, to make this region a hub for high-tech
research, manufacturing and work force training.
The state in October began seeking bids from developers to work on the
high-tech campus, saying it was seeking proposals to create "state-of-the-art
facilities and cutting edge infrastructure" at an unknown site in this area.
Several major developers in this region have expressed interest in the
contract, and they have until Dec. 10 to respond.
The project being unveiled today will be constructed on the former Republic
Steel and Donner Hanna Coke site.
The previously contaminated industrial property, which is now vacant, takes up
more than 200 acres in total, bounded by the Buffalo River to the north, Tifft
Street to the south and a set of railroad tracks and the Tifft Nature Preserve
to the west.
Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper has led a federally funded habitat restoration of
the property. The Buffalo Urban Redevelopment Corp. is the lead redevelopment
agent and has proposed a mix of commercial, residential and retail uses for the
site.
Also today, the governor is expected to visit the Ford Stamping Plant in
Woodlawn, the site of a planned $100 million investment by the automaker that
is tied to expanded production across the border and will create as many as 300
new jobs, The News reported earlier this month. That project is in line to
receive $1 million from the New York Power Authority.