Schoharie County has two winners for a total of more than $3 million in the latest round of FAST NY grants, monies intended to help make sites shovel-ready and grow jobs in high-tech manufacturing.
Among the five projects funded by Empire State Development were:
Town of Schoharie-- $2.79 million to upgrade and extend existing water lines; add a new well, connection piping and storage tank; and extend sewer lines at the proposed Highbridge site.
These improvements will double the wastewater capacity and increase the public water availability for the site, enabling the development of an additional 80 underutilized acres within the existing water and wastewater district while improving marketability.
Schoharie County IDA – $390,700 to help create a buildable lot at Shad Point to accommodate approximately 750,000 square feet of large-scale industrial space, including creating conceptual site design documents and plans for utility connections.
The IDA hopes to bring up to 450 short-term and long-term jobs to the site.
The Highbridge site has been in development for about two years as a place for light-manufacturing, warehousing or logistics—though recently, the Hyundai Corporation toured it as a possible location for a rail car manufacturing facility.
The IDA has been working on making the Shad Point site shovel-ready for the past year or so.
Statewide, this round of FAST NY funding totals $25 million.
In addition to the Town of Schoharie and the IDA, the other awardees are:
Village of Bergen – $1.26 million to support electrical infrastructure upgrades, including improvements to the electrical substation and distribution lines to allow Apple Tree Acres Corporate Park to further develop an additional 47 shovel ready acres intended for future manufacturing.
Town of Liberty – $20 million to support water and sewer infrastructure upgrades along the old Route 17 corridor, enabling the construction of a one million square foot facility in the town and encouraging the potential development of an additional 210 acres and four million square feet within the commercial corridor.
Town of Schodack – $366,000 to advance several necessary environmental studies, including State Historic Preservation Office consultation for a site located on the Route 9 corridor, which is currently undergoing a five-mile-long, $10 million water line extension, and is directly off of I-90 near several established distribution centers.