Foxconn awards $13M to three firms for start of plant construction

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Foxconn Technology Group has awarded nearly $13 million worth of contracts to three companies for the construction of the first phase of the company’s planned factory in Mount Pleasant.

Foxconn and the lead contractors Gilbane and Exyte said the chosen companies will complete foundation and related work for the nearly 1 million-square-foot advanced-manufacturing plant being built on the tech giant’s campus. The contracts are the first for vertical construction on Foxconn’s Generation 6 flat-screen manufacturing plant, which the company plans to have up and running in 2020.

The contracts are for foundation and related work and were bid out in April. The winners are:

• PSI Intertek, which will perform materials testing for foundations and related construction. The company has its headquarters in Illinois and an office in Waukesha;
• CD Smith Construction, of Fond du Lac, which will do excavation and foundation work;
• Otis Elevator Company, which will do elevator work. Otis has its headquarters in Connecticut and an office in Milwaukee.

“We’re proud to be delivering on our ‘Wisconsin First’ commitment by awarding these contracts to outstanding Wisconsin-based companies,” said Peter Buck, executive director of the Wisconn Valley Science and Technology Park. “These are the first of many forthcoming bid awards for the vertical construction of our advanced manufacturing facility, and we’re excited to drive further the construction progress at the Wisconn Valley Science and Technology Park in the coming weeks and months.”

The contracts constituted the second round of work that Foxconn has awarded this spring. In April, Foxconn announced five contractors that had been chosen to complete $34 million worth of utility and road work.

Separately on Wednesday, Mount Pleasant officials said Foxconn is on its way, following the village’s transfer of hundreds of acres to the company, to becoming the largest local taxpayer.

Claude Lois, Foxconn project director for the village, told the Mount Pleasant Village Board on Tuesday that the 1,150 acres of land that Foxconn owns in Area 1 of its development are assessed at $57.5 million, an increase in value from $49.2 million in 2018. If the village’s tax rate were to remain unchanged from what it was last year, Foxconn would owe $1.1 million worth of property taxes in 2019.

Aside from that, there are also the special assessments the company must pay on any land it has acquired. For the 850 acres found in the first phase of the company’s development, those assessments come to $90 million.

Lois said the village has acquired about 1,150 acres in Area 1 of the Foxconn site, 650 acres in Area 2 and 625 acres in Area 3, as well as 30 acres north of the project and various strips of land use for roadway expansions nearby in Sturtevant and Somers.

A number of road construction projects are either underway or have been completed near the Foxconn site. Work, for instance, has been finished on the reconstruction of County Highway H and Frontage Road, and crews are 90% done on International Drive, 70% on Braun Road and 30% on Wisconn Valley Way. Contracts have meanwhile been awarded for projects on Highway 11 and Louis Sorenson Road but that work has yet to begin. Follow @natebeck9