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By Christine Graf
For the past 42 years, Saratoga Economic Development Corporation (SEDC) has been a driving force for economic growth in Saratoga County. They have helped to generate more than 17,500 new jobs, $12 billion in investment, and $34 million in annual tax revenue for the county.
Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 was a successful year. The agency worked on 11 projects that resulted in investments of $121.3 million—more than the previous 4 years combined—and the creation and retention of over 1,100 jobs in the county.
SEDC focuses heavily on attracting manufacturing, warehouse and distribution and corporate headquarters to the area.
“We are looking for manufacturing of all kinds,” said SEDC President Dennis Brobston. “But we are precise in targeting companies that offer good paying jobs that are above the national average for the type of jobs we are looking at. We also want companies that have been in existence a long time or have good funding behind them and companies that want to be here long term–companies, like Ball Corp. and Quad Graphics, that are well funded and do a good job of taking care of their people.”
According to Brobston, Saratoga County is an ideal location for warehouse and distribution centers because it is within a day’s drive to just under 40 percent of the entire population of North America.
Although plans aren’t finalized, he said it’s possible that a warehouse or distribution center could be built on a 245-acre property in the Luther Forest Tech Campus. The property was optioned by Indiana-based real estate development and investment company Scannell Properties.
Scannell built the Amazon Distribution in Schodack and has built large facilities for a wide range of companies including FedEx, General Mills and Alcoa. If the company moves forward with developing the property, several thousand well-paying jobs could be created, he said.
The Luther Forest Tech Campus is also expected to grow in the next decade with the addition of another GlobalFoundries facility. SEDC continues to work closely with the company, which has approximately 3,000 employees and a payroll of over $300 million.
SEDC also works with companies that are interested in locating corporate headquarters or regional offices in the county. As an example, Brobston mentioned the State Farm regional claims center that located in Malta in the 1980s and brought many well-paying jobs to the area.
It is because of the county’s limited resources in terms of sites with approved zoning and available utilities that SEDC is selective when deciding what companies to work with. The Capital Region no longer generates more power than it consumes, he said, and additional power is now being imported from the north and west. Imported power is more expensive.
As a result, some local companies operate on an interruptible power supply. During periods of peak usage, these companies must either shut down or pay higher rates.
According to Brobston, “We need more capacity if we are going to grow our businesses. We need more natural gas and more electric power here. Those kinds of expansions are very, very costly. A quarter of a billion dollars was spent on power upgrades at Luther Forest. That got GlobalFoundries here, but beefed up the whole entire regional grid and improved the reliability for all of the companies in the Capital Region.
“We now have to start planning to get next 100 megawatts into our region, and that’s what we’re all struggling to figure out. It all comes down to cost, but it’s so important for us going forward.”
For that reason, SEDC is particularly interested in attracting green energy companies to the county. The addition of solar or wind power facilities could help accommodate the region’s growing demand for energy.
SEDC works with companies of all sizes and also offers assistance to entrepreneurs who want to start small businesses.
“It’s the big one you hear about, but the small ones are the ones that are hiring the most people,” said Brobston. “If you look at Grande Industrial Park, you have Saratoga Eagle who bought Northern Distributing and built a new facility there and have expanded three times. There’s also Greenfield Manufacturing, a small chemical manufacturer that started in small facility in Corinth, built a facility in Grande, and expanded within a few years. These homegrown things are really great.”
In addition to working to attract companies to the county, SEDC is focused on growing and retaining the businesses already here.
“When we talk about the future, we don’t want our businesses leaving. We do everything we can to help them grow their businesses, whether it be through networking or incentives. You need to keep what you have and can’t let them sneak out in the middle of the night. Because if they do, that means you didn’t do your job,” said Brobston.
For the past three years, SEDC has been working to build relationships with companies in Ireland. Representatives from 36 Irish companies were scheduled to travel to the region in July 2020, but because of COVID-19, the in-person events were replaced with a three-day webinar. The visit has been tentatively rescheduled for October, and Brobston described the level of interest on the part of Irish companies as “very, very serious.”
“Ireland is a very small country of less than 5 million people, but they invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the U.S.,” he said. “They have products ranging from pharmaceuticals to food products. They also have companies doing a lot of work in the equine field, for example software development to track the health of horses.”
Brobston said SEDC has more than 50 projects they are working on that could bring hundreds of millions of dollars of investment to the area.