New York Thruway fares well in manufacturing study

The Thruway corridor has landed some blockbuster projects over the past several months.

Just north of the Batavia exit, Edwards Vacuum is preparing to build a $319 million manufacturing plant. Farther east on the highway, Micron Technology is planning to invest up to $100 billion in a computer chip facility near Syracuse.

Those massive projects, along with some others, are drawing attention to the state’s main east-west highway as a destination for economic development.

And a corporate site selection consultancy’s report found that the upstate I-90 corridor, from Buffalo to Albany, stacks up well against its competitors when it comes to the annual cost of operating a manufacturing plant.

The Boyd Co. researched 30 high-tech corridors around the country, and explored the cost of operating a hypothetical 350,000-square-foot plant with 550 employees. The I-90 corridor – the only New York State area on the list – was rated seventh least expensive, at $42.8 million in annual operating costs. It was also the lowest-cost corridor in the Northeast.

The cheapest corridor on the list was in Central Texas, at $39.5 million, while the most expensive was in the San Francisco Bay area, at $53.6 million.

The study took a wider-lens view of economic development territories, focusing on corridors, instead of specific regions such as Buffalo or Rochester.

“In the site…