Albany Business Review – Aug 19, 2014, 6:55am EDT
Creighton Manning Engineering will conduct a $500,000 traffic study to determine if an additional exit off the Northway is needed to accommodate growth that GlobalFoundries has spurred in Saratoga County, New York.
GlobalFoundries, a computer chip manufacturer with more than 2,200 employees in Malta in Saratoga County, is National Grid’s fastest growing customer, said Steve Holliday, CEO of the natural gas and electricity provider. Construction is ongoing at the GlobalFoundries computer chip plant in Malta, New York. Holliday talked about GlobalFoundries’ growth last week during a meeting on the Albany area’s infrastructure needs.
National Grid is contributing $250,000 toward the traffic study that will help determine if a new exit is needed off the I-87 Northway to handle the computer chip company’s growth. “As GlobalFoundries continues to grow we have to stay ahead and stay on top of it,” Holliday says. “Their plans are very ambitious.”
GlobalFoundries is contract computer chip manufacturer headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. The company has factories in Malta, New York, Germany and Singapore. The company has invested $8 billion in its Malta plant over the past five years, and hired more than 2,200 workers. A $2 billion construction project on the company’s Technology Development center in Malta is the largest construction project underway in the Albany region.
The remaining $250,000 for the study will be funded through the Center for Economic Growth, GlobalFoundries, Saratoga County, the Saratoga County Industrial Development Agency, the town of Malta, the town of Stillwater and the Capital District Transportation Committee. Representatives from those organizations and the state Department of Transportation will oversee the study.
Exit 11 on the Northway leads to Round Lake, Malta and Ballston Lake. Exit 12 leads to Ballston Spa and Malta.
The Center for Economic Growth selected Creighton Manning Engineering to conducted the traffic study. The Albany-based civil engineering and land surveying firm was selected from a group of three companies that competed for the traffic study project.