Syracuse, NY — President Joe Biden is making his second trip to Central New York in a year and a half to celebrate Micron’s plans to build a multibillion dollar semiconductor fab in Clay.
Check back to Syracuse.com for live updates on Biden’s visit this afternoon. Air Force One is scheduled to touch down at Hancock Air National Guard base at 12:40 pm
Biden’s administration recently announced a $6.1 billion grant and a $7.5 billion loan from the federal CHIPS program to build the fab here and a smaller one in Boise, Idaho, where Micron is based. The subsidies were long expected: the president came in October 2022 to tout federal incentives as key to Micron’s plans here.
Micron says it could employ up to 9,000 people at an average salary of $100,000 per year. The $100 billion development could create 40,000 spinoff jobs.
The president’s public appearance Thursday is scheduled for 2 pm at the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology.
Micron has bankrolled a $500,000 exhibit at the museum called “Deconstructed: Semiconductors and Other Secrets Inside Everyday Technology.” The exhibit includes a pizza-sized silicon disk, similar to the ones that will be raw material for Micron’s chip making plant 10 miles north of here.
The MOST opened in 1981 in the former Syracuse Armory building, which gave the name to the surrounding business district, Armory Square.
Overnight, the city towed 13 cars that remained after a police order at 10 pm Wednesday banned parking on several streets around the museum.
The president’s last Micron-related visit in October 2022 took him to SRC Arena on the campus of Onondaga Community College.
That visit came less than two weeks before the midterm elections. This visit comes as Biden seeks reelection as president.
Several notable politicians will not be attending Thursday:
Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh is traveling and unable to wait, according to a spokesperson.
US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, DN.Y. also won’t be at the speech. She has a prior commitment to New York City, the senator’s spokesperson said.
Rep. Brandon Williams, R-Sennett, will not wait out of principle because he believes the visit is too soon after two local police officers were slain in the line of duty April 14, a spokesperson said.
Biden has a long history of ties to Syracuse and Central New York.
Biden, a graduate of SU’s College of Law, married his first wife, Neilia Hunter, an Auburn, NY, native and a Syracuse University homecoming queen, in 1966. The couple lived on Stinard Avenue in Syracuse while Biden attended SU’s law school and she taught at the old Bellevue Heights School in the city.
Neilia and the couple’s infant daughter, Naomi, would later die in an automobile accident in Delaware.
Biden maintained his ties to Syracuse throughout his political career as he served 36 years as a US senator from Delaware and two terms as VP under President Barack Obama. He returned to visit his late wife’s family or Syracuse University dozens of times, gave commencement addresses and other speeches five times at SU, and his late son Beau Biden also graduated from Syracuse’s law school.
Biden last came to Syracuse for a personal visit in February 2023 following the death of his brother-in-law in Auburn.
