BATAVIA
EDC says agri-business park would be largest in nation
BATAVIA — What is hailed as the only development “specifically dedicated to ag business” in the Northeast is in the planning stages. It is one of two business parks to be built in the Town of Batavia in the next few years.
The Genesee Valley Agri-Business Park will transform nearly 600 acres of former farmland between Routes 5 and 63 just east of the city line.
A revision of boundaries in the Empire Zone was approved last week by the Genesee County Legislature to include the property. At the time, Steven C. Lockwood, vice president of product management for the Genesee County Economic Development Center, called the park “unique in this part of the country.”
The EDC says the agri-business park will be the largest in the nation and that its location is in an “employment concentration for food production that is nearly twice the national average.”
A Canadian-based food processor is said to be the first firm to express interest in the location, which adjoins the O-At-Ka Milk Products Cooperative. Early negotiations say the first occupant would need 10 acres for a 100,000-square-foot plant.
EDC officials say that 314,000 acres, more than half the land in Genesee County, is devoted to farming. The county ranks second in overall agricultural cash receipts and fifth in the state in milk production.
Work on the expanse’s infrastructure could begin this fall with an estimated $6 million price tag. “The project has two phases and it will be several years before the park is completely occupied,” Lockwood said.
The second project now under way in an Empire Zone is the Upstate New York Medical and Technology Park being developed with its neighbor, Genesee Community College.
Site work is now in progress on a park that will seek as tenants research and development firms, laboratories, and educational training programs.
Empire Zones — the county has 1,280 acres on several sites — are managed by the EDC. They offer incentives, largely relief from income taxes, property taxes and sales taxes.
In the past 10 years, EDC, a successor to the county’s Industrial Development Agency, has developed six corporate industrial parks in the towns of Batavia, Bergen, LeRoy and Pembroke. The first — the Batavia Industrial Park in the city — is sold out, with 13 companies employing nearly 1,000 people.
