Account Login
Featured News - Current News - Archived News - News Categories
RiverBend complex likely to feature a few large buildings instead of 7 smaller ones
by chocieniThe RiverBend clean energy hub in South Buffalo - the centerpiece of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's Buffalo Billion economic development initiative - will likely feature a few large buildings to accommodate a giant solar panel factory rather than seven smaller buildings as originally envisioned.
The changes
are being designed by EYP Architecture & Engineering of Albany after solar
giant SolarCity agreed to buy California-based Silevo, the company originally
slated to move into the site, and ramped up plans.
EYP, the
biggest architecture firm in Albany and one of the 300 largest in the country,
moved its headquarters to the campus of SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and
Engineering three years ago. It has worked on some of the Albany complex's
high-profile projects, including a $365 million facility that is the home for
the Global 450 mm Consortium, a new state-backed venture aimed at producing
next-generation computer chip technology on larger, 450 mm silicon wafers.
"They're a
pretty well-renowned firm," said Christopher Beitel, Silevo's executive vice
president.
Work on the
RiverBend site has progressed slowly as the SolarCity acquisition required a
major revamp of the site's plans, and the closing of the $2.5 million sale of
the 88-acre site off South Park Avenue only took place Tuesday.
EYP, which
has 385 employees at a dozen offices across the country, has done extensive
work for colleges and government agencies across the globe. The company has
worked on more than 80 U.S. embassies around the world and more than 50 college
academic buildings across the country. Among its more prominent projects, the
firm designed the $69 million renovation of the Birch Bayh Federal Building and
U.S. Courthouse in Indianapolis, a nearly three-year effort that greatly
improved the energy efficiency of the century-old building.
Earlier this
year, EYP was picked to design a new classroom building on the Virginia Tech
campus and to plan the renovation of the historic Steidle Building on the Penn
State campus.
Kelly
Donohue, an EYP spokeswoman, declined to comment on the RiverBend project.
The
RiverBend complex is based on the same model the state used to create a
bustling semiconductor industry in Albany, centered around the nanoscience
college. The state plans to build the facilities in the RiverBend complex and
equip them with state-of-the-art machinery that will be owned by the state,
which then will contract with tenants like SolarCity to use them.
With the
property sale now closed, workers from the project's developer, LPCiminelli,
have started some small-scale excavation work at the site. Before the closing,
most of the site work had been limited to environmental studies and early-stage
testing, as well as some technical work to better understand the property's
geology.
When city
and state officials reached an agreement in early May on the $2.5 million deal
for the Buffalo Urban Development Corp. to sell the site to the state, city
officials expected the sale to be completed by the end of May. But the closing
took longer because of the complex nature of the deal, which involves an environmentally
contaminated site once home to the sprawling Republic Steel plant. Other delays
centered around the creation of a property owners association, structured much
like the homeowners association in a condominium complex, to oversee the costs
involved with future environmental monitoring and operations at the site, as
well as normal property maintenance work there.
Exactly what
shape the RiverBend complex will take still is being determined. The
preliminary design for the complex, which envisioned as many as seven
rectangular-shaped buildings along a road through the center of the site, was
rendered moot when SolarCity said it wanted to vastly increase the scope of the
Buffalo factory.
"The initial
idea is growing," said Brendan R. Mehaffy, executive director of the City of
Buffalo's Office of Strategic Planning.
Silevo
executives have said the plans for the RiverBend complex are being revamped to
include fewer buildings than were originally planned, but bigger.
The state
has had serious discussions with company executives about the project since the
mid-June announcement that SolarCity was acquiring Silevo, Cuomo has said.
Under the
original plan, the state pledged to invest $225 million to develop the
RiverBend complex. Silevo had planned to occupy most of the first
275,000-square-foot building in the complex, but SolarCity, the nation's
biggest residential solar energy system installer, now says it wants the
Buffalo factory to have five times the capacity.
Under
SolarCity's plan, the Buffalo factory would have the annual capacity to make
enough solar panels to produce 200 megawatts of electricity a year to 1
gigawatt, or 1,000 megawatts, up from the 200-megawatt capacity in Silevo's
original plan. The Buffalo factory would be one of the largest solar panel
production facilities in the world.
With the
expansion, the Buffalo factory now is expected to provide well over 1,000 jobs,
rather than the 475 initially forecast. Another California-based company, LED
manufacturer Soraa, also is slated to move into the RiverBend complex.