There are a lot of great developments going on in Buffalo for the
time being: Canalside restoration efforts are beautifying the
waterfront, the HARBORCENTER will draw elite youth hockey talent and
many spectators, and the new UB medical school will offer the region’s
first comprehensive academic medical center – to name a few. But even if
many of Buffalo’s faithful citizens aren’t aware, the announcement of
not one, but two new manufacturing tenants in the heart of South Buffalo
could trump them all.
On November 21 Gov. Andrew Cuomo (NY-D)
shared the momentous news of the state’s successful effort to draw a
pair of high-tech giants to Buffalo’s waterfront. The Buffalo News quoted
Cuomo saying, “It’s probably the most exciting economic development
announcement that we’ve had statewide since I’ve been governor. This
project, I believe, is a game changer for Western New York.”
Dubbed
the Buffalo High-Tech Manufacturing Innovation Hub at RiverBend, six
275,000 square-foot facilities (one each for the new tenants, the
remaining four buildings remain vacant for now) will house the new
companies at the old Republic Steel site. The development is a huge gain
for South Buffalo, as is at least 850 new permanent jobs for a region
that has clamored for decades to develop quality employment. State
officials noted during the announcement that approximately 800 of those
jobs will go to those living in the Buffalo Niagara region.
Soraa,
the world’s leading developer of solid-state LED lighting technology
built on pure gallium nitride substrates, as stated on their website,
will generate 375 new jobs. The company was founded in 2008 in
California, and has seen strong growth in a few short years. Their
business model revolves around being the world’s best LED light-maker
through innovation, which was spotlighted in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)
in April. Their latest LED creation generates 40 percent more light
than standard halogen LED bulbs while cutting power consumption by 80-85
percent. “We really pushed the envelope of what is possible,” said
Soraa Chief Executive Eric Kim in the WSJ piece.
The remaining 475 permanent jobs will be through Silevo,
a solar panel manufacturer founded in Silicon Valley in 2007. Currently
the company manufactures out of its California headquarters, as well as
a facility in China. In terms of panel efficiency, Silevo’s solar
panels are on the higher end of most high-volume solar panel
manufacturers (21 percent, compared to 14-16 percent for most others),
according to ThinkProgress earlier this year.
Despite
being courted by several other locations for expansion, Silevo CEO
Zheng Xu told The Buffalo News that production costs were a major
selling point in selecting the Riverbend location. “The production costs
in Buffalo are as good or as cheap as in China,” Xu stated, and expects
the Buffalo facility to produce around 200 megawatts of panels each
year once fully operational.
Each company will invest $750 million of their own funds for the South Buffalo facilities.
Ninety
acres of brownfield space along the Buffalo River will be converted
into some of the most innovative green energy research and high-tech
manufacturing space in the country. Convincing many companies to clean
up chemically-contaminated land for reuse can pose a challenge. However,New York State is one of many states to offer tax breaks for businesses to revitalize brownfields.
As the Environmental Protection Agency explains,
cleaning up brownfield regions “protects the environment, reduces
blight, and takes development pressures off greenspaces and working
lands.” It also improves the property value of the surrounding
businesses and residences.
The RiverBend project will be run by
the State University of New York’s Research Foundation, based out of
Albany. In all, New York State invested $225 million into the project –
nearly a quarter of the Buffalo billion-dollar commitment by Cuomo in
2012 to revitalize the Western New York region. No other investment
through the billion-dollar commitment has matched the $225 million price
tag. “Today we come full circle,” Cuomo stated during his
announcement speech, adding, “Buffalo’s future is the future of the
state of New York.”
http://theenergycollective.com/ecskris/309811/17-billion-investment-towards-buffalo-energy-facilities-will-be-game-changer
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