Officials from Mount Pleasant, Racine County and Foxconn Technology Group signed a developers agreement Friday outlining a $764 million local investment to support the company’s 22 million-square-foot LCD manufacturing campus.
“For a village like ours, this is an opportunity that’s unheard of,” said Dave DeGroot, Mount Pleasant village president.
The village and county boards unanimously signed off on the package earlier this week. It outlines a number of investments to be made in infrastructure, land acquisition and workforce development to support the project.
Some of the infrastructure work could begin in the near future, but a groundbreaking for Foxconn’s campus likely won’t take place until the spring.
Foxconn Technology Group would begin its massive LCD manufacturing campus with an assembly plant that could be more than 1.5 million square feet along Highway H in Mount Pleasant, according to Claude Lois, village project manager.
The facility is the first priority for construction and the company hopes to have it done by 2019. It will replicate some of the assembly work now being done by Foxconn at a leased facility a few miles away.
The company submitted initial site plans to the village on Friday morning, just ahead of a ceremony to mark the signing of a local developers agreement. That agreement required the company to submit draft plans by Friday.
Jenny Trick, Racine County Economic Development Corp. executive director, called the package “conservative, creative and thorough” while Racine County executive Jonathan Delagrave said even though it was moved expeditiously “it was not rushed.”
“We have a good partner in Foxconn,” Delagrave said.
Louis Woo, special assistant to Foxconn chairman Terry Gou, acknowledged the local officials supporting the project were going out on a limb to support it.
“To any one of us, an uncertain future is scary,” Woo said. “I can assure you we have done this before.”
Foxconn has ambitious plans for the creation of an 8K+5G ecosystem, which would use next generation screen resolution and cellular data to offer new solutions in industries from advanced manufacturing to health care to entertainment.
“You should not look at Foxconn as a manufacturing company, we are way beyond that,” Woo said.
He added the company and local entities are co-investing in the future of Racine County and said it was important the village and county both unanimously approved the deal.
“The future is bright, but we have to continue to work very hard,” Woo said.
