New details about Micron and the aquarium were among the major highlights of Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon’s state of the county address Thursday night. As crews excavate the future site of the massive semiconductor chip fabs in Clay, McMahon said his team has been traveling overseas to start building out the supply chain. He said they received a multi-million dollar commitment from a south Korean company called Wonik.
“Wonick Materials is a critical Tier 1 supplier to the global semiconductor industry, specializing in the production and purification of high purity specialty gases and precursors," McMahon said.
Precursors are substances used as starting materials for chemical reactions. Wonik will eventually hire 100 people. McMahon said another company called Target Hospitality will locate here and develop high-quality scalable housing for the construction workforce.
Meanwhile, construction on the aquarium continues in the Inner Harbor, and McMahon said the main habitat will be 33 feet deep with a tunnel running through it.
“When visitors walk through that space, they won't just be looking at an exhibit. They'll be stepping into what we believe will be the deepest underwater tunnel experience in any public aquarium in the United States," he said.
McMahon said the acrylic panels are nearly 18 inches thick and are among the most complex ever made. The aquarium is expected to open in late summer.
JAIL MERGER "PIVOT"
Perhaps one of the bigger surprises to come out of the state of the county address is a plan to merge the county's two jails. Until now, County Executive McMahon and Sheriff Toby Shelly have been at odds about the future of the justice center downtown and Jamesville Correctional Center. McMahon originally wanted to close Jamesville due to low population and high costs, while keeping and even expanding the downtown jail. The sheriff took McMahon to court to stop the plan but lost. Three years later, McMahon said he reserves the right to pivot, and his position has changed.
“We need one jail. We never studied having the one jail out in Jamesville. So I'm open to doing that," he said. "So by having a public safety campus in Jamesville, you could have the many benefits with that. But one of the other benefits could be that you have two key pieces of property on State Street that could be turned over to the private sector.”
That other piece of property would be sheriff's headquarters, which are outdated and inadequate. McMahon said freeing up those properties would help fulfill a vision for a more linear and attractive convention district extending south to the Oncenter.
For his part, Sheriff Shelley says the 30-year-old justice center is wearing fast and costs too much to maintain.
“The facility at Jamesville is in a lot better condition. So it just makes sense to add on to Jamesville as opposed to trying to do the infrastructure repairs at the Justice Center," he said. "There's a lot of room there. Parking's not an issue. There's room to expand out.”
Jamesville is currently used for sentenced individuals, while the justice center is a holding facility for those awaiting trial. Shelley said he and McMahon are creating exploratory committees to look at the proposal in more detail.
