Questions are being raised about the development of a key industrial park in Genesee County.
A Massachusetts startup company called 1366 Technologies has been talking about building a plant that makes silicon wafers for solar power cells in Genesee County for some time now.
But (as Steve Orr of the D&C first noted), a publication called E&E News, which covers energy and the environment, says that the New England Company has to persuade the U.S. Department of Energy to come through with a $150 million loan guarantee promised by the Obama administration.
The idea is to locate the plant in a large tract of land in the Town of Alabama that Genesee County calls Western New York STAMP, or Science and Technology Advanced Manufacturing Park.
Steve Hyde heads up Genesee County Economic Development. He tells WXXI News that he is still optimistic and feels that the Trump Administration’s emphasis on creating jobs will lead them to follow through with this project.
“It’s not like they’re going to throw the baby out with the bathwater and here we sit with a U.S. based innovation from MIT that wants to build their global manufacturing hub in upstate new York, why would they want to run away from that ?”
Hyde says the 1366 Technologies plant would fit in with President Trump’s goals for job creation, saying that “the new administration is all about bringing back advanced manufacturing to the states and here sits a company that’s got a home grown, highly innovative very well tested technologically working in hundreds of thousands of solar panels across the world.”
The solar manufacturing facility is a key part of developing the STAMP business park, but Hyde says they are also getting inquiries from other businesses who might be interested in locating there.
