In losing, tech center struts its stuff

When the Hudson Valley Technology Campus (HVTC), the sprawling, vacant former IBM semi-conductor manufacturing facility situated in East Fishkill, recently lost out to Singapore in its bid to attract a multinational firm headquartered in Europe, it underlined the degree to which it is a player in the global marketplace.

“What”™s different now is that while in the past 10 years the talk was of globalization, now it”™s right in front of us,” said Anthony Campagiorni, president and CEO of the Hudson Valley Economic Development Corp. “The last two companies we lost out on were big tech users, who instead went to Singapore and Germany. We are competing globally in the market. People always talk about it; now we see it.”

Sold by IBM to Pennsylvania-based real estate firm Preferred Realty Group Inc. in 2006 for $20 million, the complex”™s four huge metal-and-glass clad structures are laid out with the geometrical severity of a corporate Versailles. The awesome scale and cloistered reserve of the modernistic shedlike architecture hints at an advanced tech capability. You could almost imagine the complex were visible from space.

It has almost a million square feet of industrial space. On a tour of the property, Gordon Rutherford, director of business attraction at the Dutchess County Economic Development Corp., pointed at one looming structure and noted it contained a class-one clean room, where IBM fabricated its 200mm chips; he explained to this novice that class 100,000 was equivalent to a standard office and class 10,000 to a laboratory.

Besides ample room for offices, there is a commissary and 400-seat auditorium, housed in a neighboring building featuring a skating rink-sized protrusion of mirrored glass. All infrastructure is located above ground ”“ huge pipes are mounted atop metal lattices mounted on concrete columns ”“ which makes inspection easy for potential buyers, Rutherford said.

A helipad enables executives in New York City to be whisked to the property in 20 minutes. There”™s also a weather station. “We get a lot of requests about whether there are heavy snows, earthquakes or floods,” Rutherford said, noting that the lack of such risks was another plus for the area.

Even to the untrained eye, one of the property”™s prime selling points is immediately apparent ”“ what Campagiorni described as “a massive infrastructure. All the buildings have water, sewer and the capability for high-tech use.” When IBM constructed the complex in the 1980s, it was at an “out-of-scale level.”

The campus also has its own utility plant, whose redundant power and dual-feed cooling and chilling systems can provide “more than two times what you”™d ever need,” Campagiorni said. “You”™d have to pay for that in other places in the valley. Here, it”™s already built in.”

Another advantage is the complex”™s location just a hop and skip over the rows of power lines from the Hudson Valley Research Park, the current IBM campus whose numerous humongous structures include the corporation”™s new, $2.5 billion 300mm chip fabrication plant. With partners such as Samsung, Sony, Toshiba and NXP (the investor group that took over the former Philips Semiconductor plant) represented at the site, this formidable facility probably generates more patents per square foot than any other patch on Earth. Indeed, “there”™s not a lot of places in the world that have advanced facilities like that,” Campagiorni said. The potential global synergies are enticing for a firm wishing to sell, say, tech products to the semiconductor manufacturer.

The third biggest-selling point of the HVTC is invisible to the eye, but no less tangible: the skilled work force ”“ some 18,000 individuals strong ”“ generated by this electronics and semiconductor cluster. “Talent is king,” said Campagiorni. “If you could find the appropriate talent, people are willing to pay.” He points to the example of Boston, where despite housing and work-force costs that are probably twice as high as South Carolina”™s, companies in the tech and biomedical sectors continue to flock. And Manhattan, where certain industries are willing to pay $100 per square foot.

So what did Singapore have that East Fishkill didn”™t? Campagiorni said the Asian location offered two prime advantages. “Their edge was they were a bit deeper in the potential customer base. Although we have an advanced facility, they had more players, producing chips of all varieties. There are so many manufacturing companies in the Pacific Rim.”

The second advantage was timing: the ability of the Singapore facility to get up to speed immediately, thanks to government intervention. “We understand our limitation,” Campagiorni said. “The U.S. is not going to 100 percent subsidize everything here.” What”™s important is that “we have a nimble and quick response from the state in putting out our best offer.”

One challenge at the HTVC is the complexity in reconfiguring. “It was built for a specific user. Any time you have a new user there”™s some configuration issues.” So far, most leads have come from “players in the data center world or advanced tech manufacturing, such as photovoltaics and other electronics.”

Campagiorni said his office is also marketing leased space at the IBM campus. “The menu of services is pretty impressive. IBM is unique as a landlord. They can do so much for you,” like offering data centers, fabrication shops, and an array of industrial chemicals and gases for semiconductor manufacturing.