ALBANY --
Whether you call you it "corporate welfare" or "economic development", one thing is certain: the high tech "seeding of the clouds" by state government back in the mid-90's is seeing results……
Just this week, the Assembly announced a $28 million grant to transform an old lab outside Syracuse, but that's hardly the beginning of the story…The beginning starts here officially at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at UAlbany. But think of it as a mall where high tech companies like IBM rent space and develop innovations at the molecular level. Because nanotechnology is the science of working with material smaller than an atom, the work at the nano-mall is done in clean rooms. The nano-mall has one of the largest of its kind in the world.The innovations developed here, will be turned into products for commercial and military use here – at an old GE lab that Lockheed Martin this week announced it would be re-tooling. It's the latest in a series of projects by the State to capitalize on its initial $6 billion investment in nanotech, an investment that regions around the State would like to benefit from.
The State's investment has created jobs – 2500 people work at the nano-mall, and 250 more jobs could be produced by work in Syracuse.
But it hasn’t come cheap. The $28 million grant will actually be financed through the Dormitory authority.
