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An aerial photo of site preparation work at the Foxconn site in Mount Pleasant. (Photo by Curt Waltz of www.aerialscapes.com.)[/caption]
Four of the contracts for a 120,000-square-foot multipurpose building went to companies based in metro Milwaukee. Those firms included precast work by Waukesha-based Spancrete Inc., concrete by Butler-based Superior Masonry Builders Inc., electrical work by New Berlin-based Pieper Electric Inc. and mechanical, plumbing and fire protection work by Pewaukee-based Total Mechanical Inc.
“We are pleased that a team of companies with strong track records in Wisconsin has been assembled to support the development and construction of our first building in the Wisconn Valley Science and Technology Park,” said Alan Yeung, Foxconn director of U.S. strategic initiatives and president of FEWI Development Corp.
All eight firms have a Wisconsin presence. Schofield-Tased Merrill Steel is providing structural steel and miscellaneous metals work and the Milwaukee offices of Pennsylvania-based Bright View Landscape Development Inc. and Connecticut-based Otis Elevator Co. will handle landscape and elevator work respectively.
“We continue to see significant interest from Wisconsin companies to be a part of this project and look forward to working with additional partners as we execute on construction and development plans for the park,” said Adam Jelen, senior vice president at Gilbane which, along with German firm The M+W Group, is serving as Foxconn’s general contractor on the project.
Foundation work on the multipurpose building is expected to begin in August and the building should be complete by late 2018 or early 2019.
The building will serve as construction offices for companies working on the Foxconn project. It will also be home to research and development facilities for Foxconn along with the testing of equipment and advanced manufacturing and assembly techniques.
The announcement of contracts for the first building comes just two days ahead of a scheduled ceremonial groundbreaking that President Donald Trump is set to attend. Foxconn originally announced its intent to build a manufacturing campus in Wisconsin during a ceremony at the White House in late July last year.
Crews have already been working on the nearly 800-acre Foxconn site since late April, with $100 million in site preparation contracts already awarded. Getting the site fully ready for development is expected to take until August of next year.
Plans for the site have also changed over the last year. When Mount Pleasant and Racine County officials signed a local development agreement with the company late last year, officials expected the company would build a large assembly facility, perhaps more than 1.5 million square feet, as the first building.
And when the project was originally announced, Foxconn chairman Terry Gou said the company would build a Generation 10.5 thin-film-transistor LCD fabrication facility intended to build the largest screens in the world.
Louis Woo, special assistant to Gou, confirmed to BizTimes last week the company plans to build a sixth generation LCD fab plant on the site first to have more flexibility in choosing which size screens to make.
Woo said the Gen 6 fab still represents the latest technology, but acknowledged it won’t require a glass plant to be located on the Foxconn site. New York-based Corning Inc. had been expected to build a $1 billion plant that would employ 400 people on the site when plans were first announced.
For its part, Foxconn has said it remains committed to investing $10 billion and creating 13,000 jobs, even though the Gen 6 facility won’t require as much capital as the Gen 10.5 plant would have.
