THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 17, 1996 TAG: 9605170463
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines
A $1.5 billion computer chip factory planned by Siemens A.G. and Motorola Inc. will be built in Henrico County, a newspaper reported Thursday.
The suburban Richmond county and a site in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas has been in the running for the facility that will employ almost 1,000 people.
The project would be the third multibillion-dollar investment by the computer semiconductor industry in a year in Virginia.
According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the companies selected the state-owned Elko tract, a 2,372-acre parcel near Richmond International Airport in eastern Henrico.
Neither Siemens nor Motorola would confirm the report. The newspaper cited sources it did not identify.
The agreement is expected to be formally announced Monday, with Gov. George F. Allen - currently on a two-week trade mission to the Far East - participating by telephone from Hong Kong, the Times-Dispatch said.
Allen, in Tokyo this week, had no comment on the report.
``Our policy - and mine - is not to discuss matters until the principals in the private sector announce it,'' he said. ``But it's no surprise that we have been working on a multitude of prospects for high-technology companies to create good jobs and continue the Virginia renaissance.''
Motorola already has announced plans to invest up to $3 billion to make microprocessing chips at a site in Goochland County. IBM Corp. and Toshiba Corp. plan to spend $1 billion on a computer chip plant in Manassas.
To land the Siemens-Motorola project, taxpayers will have to ante up tax credits for the two firms for facilities and jobs, as well as underwrite $17 million in performance grants.
Under the grants, firms receive cash payments from the state after achieving specific production levels. The state also is offering corporate income tax breaks based on the number of jobs created.
The new plant would make ``dynamic random access memory'' chips capable of storing and retrieving enormous amounts of information at split-second speed.
Siemens announced the project at its Munich headquarters on Oct. 25, the same day that Motorola, based in Schaumburg, Ill., said it would join the German company, IBM and Toshiba in developing future generations of memory chips. by CNB