Site selectors: Area ‘beyond expectations’

National corporate site selectors wrapping up a three-day visit to the region say they’ve been surprised by its industrial and educational strengths.

Two of them said the semiconductor industry has developed more than they realized, though adding that New York state and the region still have challenges in attracting new businesses and quality employees.

“I was very surprised to see what was going on in New York state,” said Lee Higgins, senior vice-president of Site Selection Group of Austin, Texas. “You can read about it, but it makes a tremendous difference, having a first-hand impression.”

Site selectors are people who help companies figure out the best places to locate new facilities. The visit, organized by local economic development officials, was the first of its kind.

They toured the General Electric medical imaging plant in Rensselaer County, the nanotechnology research center at the University at Albany and GlobalFoundries in Malta.

“I really learned about [the region’s] strengths, some of which I was not aware of before,” said Kathy Mussio, managing partner of Atlas Insight, a site selection and incentives consulting firm in Fair Haven, N.J.

She said the Albany area should be given a close look by nanotechnology companies looking for a location in an area with good regional support.

The visit was organized by the Saratoga Economic Development Corp., the Center for Economic Growth in Albany, and the Rensselaer County Industrial Development Agency, organizations interested in attracting more semiconductor and other high-tech jobs to the Capital Region. Reporters were invited to meet with the visitors Friday morning in Saratoga Springs, before the group spent a few hours at the Saratoga Race Course.

This is the first time national site selectors have visited Saratoga County, but more such tours are being planned, said Dennis Brobston, president of the Saratoga Economic Development Corp.

The economic development organizations do the day-to-day work to attract new businesses to the region, including supply-chain and service companies interested in locating around the GlobalFoundries plant, which will start commercial production late next year.

“What this does, it gets us on site selection lists,” said J. Shelby Schneider, SEDC’s marketing director.

Higgins, familiar with the rise and evolution of the semiconductor industry in Austin, said GlobalFoundries will be a magnet over time for other companies. “Will it usher in additional growth? I believe so. Will it be five years, 10 years? That’s harder to predict,” he said.

He said the presence of major research programs at Albany Nanotech and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute should keep the local high-tech sector growing, but the region will face the challenge of convincing college graduates living elsewhere “this isn’t your grandfather’s upstate New York.”

He said people don’t necessarily realize what an impressive achievement GlobalFoundries is — a $4.6 billion factory being built in what was a forest, with none of the necessary industrial infrastructure in place when it started.

Mussio, in her first extended visit to the Saratoga area, said what she saw, including GlobalFoundries, was “beyond my expectations.”

She said the Albany area could be the number one or two center nationally for semiconductor manufacturing, but it will require New York state to become more business-friendly, reducing red tape and the overall corporate tax burden.

“New York and New England have to do something to control costs and get them in line with lower-cost areas, even elsewhere in the United States,” she said.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said one of his economic development goals is to reduce business costs in the state. GlobalFoundries is receiving nearly $1.4 billion in state incentives under a deal negotiated in 2006.

Rob DeRocker, a New York City-based economic development marketing consultant working for SEDC, said the goal of bringing in the site selectors was to get the region on the list of places companies consider.

“Over the last couple days, all of them have said, ‘We had no idea,’ ” said DeRocker, a Gloversville native. “We said, ‘Mission accomplished.’ ”

Categories: Business