Clay, N.Y. — Onondaga County is moving aggressively to expand a vacant business park in Clay, in hopes of luring major high-tech manufacturers.
The property buying spree is sparking anger among property owners whose homes are suddenly smack dab in the middle of the planned business park.
The county controls nearly 1,000 acres on the north side of Route 31 east of Caughdenoy Road. It plans to expand its holdings to 1,253 acres — an area three times the size of the New York State Fairgrounds — in hopes of attracting such high-tech manufacturers as semiconductor fabricators.
New marketing materials for White Pine Commerce Park include a map showing the park stretching east along Route 31 from Caughdenoy Road all the way to the Cicero town line. In the middle of the planned park is Burnet Road, which contains 37 homes.
“How can they do that?” said Michelle Nuzzo, who has lived on the road for 12 years. “They’re marketing our homes, and they don’t even own them.”
Aerial view shows Burnet Road, right, and Route 31, left, in Clay. Burnet Road and the 37 homes on it are included in Onondaga County’s plans for White Pine Commerce Park. N. Scott Trimble | strimble@syracuse.com
Officials talk optimistically about the spot which, in a smaller form, has sat vacant for 20 years. The stakes are high: Semiconductor makers typically invest billions of dollars and hire more than 1,000 people.
“The reality is that this site is one of the top sites in the country for high-tech manufacturing because of the infrastructure,” County Executive Ryan McMahon said. “So, we’re going to get looks. We learned the site needed to be bigger. We’ve made it bigger. We’re making it bigger.”
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, now the Senate majority leader, told Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard he has spoken to President Joe Biden about the importance of the Clay project.
The county Industrial Development Agency has been approaching many of the homeowners on Burnet Road about selling their properties or granting purchase options to the county. Some are negotiating, but others say they do not want to move from the road that many have lived on for decades.
Nuzzo said a real estate agent working with the agency has called her three times since September asking if she would sell. Each time, she told him she was not interested, she said.
Many residents said the rural character of their neighborhood would be hard to reproduce elsewhere in Clay.
“I love how quiet it is,” said Robin Richer, who has lived on the road her entire life. “We’ve known all our neighbors all of our lives. And it’s a dead-end road, so there’s no traffic.”
Many homeowners have put “Save Our Homes,” “We Say No To Clay Industrial Park” and other signs in their yards.
They also have created a Facebook page, Clay Homes Preservation Coalition, to share information about the county’s plans. A petition on the website protesting the county’s plans has 275 signatures.
Maureen Matthews, who has lived on the road for 32 years, said she has received two letters asking her to sell her home. But she said her mother and other family members live close by, and she does not want to leave.
Matthews said residents understand something will eventually go into the business park and would not oppose a development that does not include their homes.
“I can’t imagine there would be any other places that have what I have here,” she said. “I love the beautiful scenery, and I know all my neighbors.”
Others said they are reluctant to sell homes they have had in some cases for decades, only to see them sit vacant for years while the county looks for a tenant.
The county began buying mostly vacant former farmland at the northeast corner of Caughdenoy Road and Route 31 in 1999 in hopes of luring a semiconductor maker to the site, then called Clay Business Park.
In 2012, the county’s development agency renamed the site White Pine Commerce Park, hoping it would sound more attractive to high-tech manufacturing looking for a campus-like setting.
As of September 2020, the county and its development agency had spent at least $5.3 million acquiring land along Route 31, Caughdenoy Road and Burnet Road, preparing environmental studies and designing a sewer system for the site.
That same month, the agency authorized its executive director, Robert Petrovich, to negotiate and enter into purchase option agreements costing up to a total of $200,000. Petrovich will have to come back to the board for further approvals if the decision is made to exercise the options. (Purchase options give the holder the right to buy a property for a specified price within a certain time period.)
Syracuse.com last week requested an updated figure on how much the agency has spent or contracted to spend to acquire land for the park and will update this story when the information is provided.
So far, the county has had no luck luring a tenant to White Pine, but McMahon disclosed in October during a meeting with Burnet Road residents that the site was a finalist last year for a major semiconductor plant. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., also known as TSMC, announced in May that it had chosen a site in Arizona for a $12 billion chip plant that will employ more than 1,600 people and begin production in 2024.
At the time, the development agency controlled about 700 acres of land there. But McMahon said the county learned during its pitches to TSMC and other potential tenants that White Pine needs to be larger to compete for large high-tech manufacturing facilities that could help transform the Central New York economy.
County officials say the site is especially attractive because it is close to a National Grid substation that could provide loads of power, a feature high-tech manufacturers want.
Adding to the urgency of acquiring more land for the park are new federal incentives for semiconductor makers to bring their manufacturing from overseas to the U.S.
Legislation approved by Congress in December will set up a grant program through the U.S. Department of Commerce to help build, expand or modernize semiconductor fabricating, assembly, testing and packaging plants. It also will provide grants for semiconductor companies to open new research and development facilities in the United States.
Schumer, who helped push the legislation through Congress, said the site in Clay stands out among a handful nationwide as a prime location for a massive semiconductor manufacturing plant.
Schumer told syracuse.com he will use his new influence as Senate majority leader to help steer chip makers to the Clay spot.
“One way I can help Central New York is with an emphasis on semiconductors,” he said. “We have one of the prime sites in the entire country to host a semiconductor facility.”
“I’ve talked to (President) Joe Biden about this and told him how important this was,” Schumer said.
In addition to the available power, the site stands out because of its easy access to affordable water, he said. The Metropolitan Water Board’s main pipeline from Lake Ontario brings water to a reservoir nearby on Route 31.
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. is looking at a site at a large industrial campus in Genesee County in western New York, as well as sites in Arizona and Texas, for a $17 billion chip factory that would employ 1,900 people, according to The Wall Street Journal. It would be operational by October 2022.
McMahon said he understands not all the Burnet Road homeowners want to sell. But he said the county will continue to communicate with owners who “realize that they live next to an industrial business park now.”
“Some of them would like to sell the property, some of them say they would not like to sell their property, and some of them are saying they would sell but it’s got to be for a certain dollar amount,” he said. “So what we’re trying to do is give ourselves flexibility.”
He said the exact size of the park ultimately will depend on the tenant the site lands. For that reason, the county development agency prefers to acquire purchase options on some of the land, especially the area east of Burnet Road, he said.
“We may never need to buy some of the homes in that neighborhood at all,” McMahon said. “But we may need to at some point to land the big economic development deal. And at that point, then we have serious conversations with them and figure out how we make a deal where everybody’s happy.”
County property records show the development agency owns one home on the road. In November 2019, it paid $504,000 for the house at 8653 Burnet Road and the 43-acre parcel.
In September, the agency agreed to pay $500,000 for a 198-acre property at 8739 Burnet Road, though the sale is not yet recorded on the county’s property website.
Noa DeNova, who lives on Burnet Road with his father and girlfriend, said many homeowners are worried that, if they do not agree to sell, they will find themselves surrounded by an industrial development. He said he has been in negotiations to sell his three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home but has not reached an agreement.
DeNova said he was not impressed with the first offer he received from the agent working for the county — $200,000. The offer was so low, he didn’t even bother making a counteroffer, he said.
“We owe $220,000 on it, and the market is going up,” he said. “We couldn’t find anything comparable for that price.”
The agent’s second offer was better, $250,000, but still not close to what he would need to relocate, he said. He countered: $350,000. The agent then offered $275,000. Still not good enough, he said.
“They should just make real good offers to everybody and be done with it,” he said.
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