On SK hynix: Ahead of Thursday's community meeting
Heading into the second of three community meetings about SK hynix’s $3.87B plans in West Lafayette: A new format, an FAQ and a timeline on when site selection came up in public sessions.
As the countdown continues toward a pivotal May 5 vote by the West Lafayette City Council on controversial request to rezone land for a $3.87 billion SK hynix advanced chip packaging facility north of Kalberer Road …
SK HYNIX LAUNCHES AN FAQ SITE: The South Korean semiconductor company and Purdue Research Foundation on Tuesday released a website with their plans for a $3.87 billion R&D and advanced chip packaging facility expected to open for production in 2028 and eventually employ 1,000 people in West Lafayette. The FAQ offers SK hynix’s answers to questions raised recently about site selection and the company’s approach to environmental, waste handling, traffic and other issues. According to the company, the website will include additional content in the coming days. For now, here’s a way into a page about “Project Neuron,” which was the code name used when recruiting SK hynix to the Purdue Research Park: neuron.prf.org
FORMAT SET FOR THURSDAY’S COMMUNITY MEETING: SK hynix officials, looking to persuade the community about the project, have scheduled three community meetings about their plans. The second will be 6:30-8:30 p.m. Thursday, April 24, at the West Lafayette Wellness Center, 1101 Kalberer Road.
According to the company, the format will be less of a public presentation and Q&A session – as it was during an April 11 session – as it will be a station-to-station setup to answer one-on-one questions over the two hours. Three stations will focus on safety, health and the environment; about SK hynix and a project overview; and what the company called “semiconductor introduction.” SK hynix representatives will be at each station to answer questions.
A third community meeting will be 9-11 a.m. Saturday, May 3, at a location still being determined.
In play: A pair of rezoning requests connected to the project – north of Kalberer Road, between Yeager Road and County Road 50 West/Salisbury Street – has been scheduled for a city council vote at 6:30 p.m. May 5 at city hall, 222 N. Chauncey Ave. The Area Plan Commission voted 9-5 on March 19 to recommend denial of the industrial zoning request for 121 acres where SK hynix wants to build its facility.
A SHORT TIMELINE OF PUBLIC DISCUSSIONS ABOUT SK HYNIX’S SITE: Not everything about how SK hynix settled on what’s being called “Site B” – a 121-acre tract owned by Purdue Research Foundation since 1955, annexed into West Lafayette in 2006 and now the subject of a controversial rezoning request – is public, in the typically closed-door negotiations of corporate site selection.
So, questions continue about when SK hynix’s location was set and when it was out in public view. This doesn’t necessarily crack the code behind non-disclosure agreements connected to the project, but here’s a short timeline, dating to the April 2024 announcement of the $3.87 billion facility, of mentions of SK hynix’s proposed sites in West Lafayette, based on reporting of public meetings, votes and interviews in Based in Lafayette.
(Note: The dates listed are when the stories appeared in Based in Lafayette.)
April 3, 2024: The day SK hynix announced its plans in West Lafayette – in a ceremony that packed the Purdue Memorial Union Ballrooms with dignitaries that included Gov. Eric Holcomb, West Lafayette’s congressional delegation and more – part of the incentive package used to lure the company included PRF offering discounted land pricing for 90 industrially-zoned acres, with an option to expand on an additional 30 acres to support production, R&D and supply chain development. That day, PRF and university officials said that 90 acres was in the Purdue Research Park just west of the recently completed Yeager Road extension, north of Endeavor Drive and about a quarter-mile north of Kalberer Road. (People describing the site to local reporters started by using Walt’s Pub, near the corner of Kalberer and Yeager roads, as a reference point.)
According to county property records and the Purdue Research Foundation, PRF purchased that land in 1955. It was annexed into West Lafayette in 2006.
The day of SK hynix’s announcement, questions lingered about Minnesota-based SkyWater Technologies, which in July 2022 had announced plans to build a $1.8 billion manufacturing plant in Purdue’s Discovery Park District, just west of campus. Former Purdue President Mitch Daniels, chair of the Purdue Research Foundation, said that day that despite things not emerging on construction for SkyWater, the company still had an option on the ground in the Discovery Park District.
April 5, 2024: Purdue officials confirmed that SkyWater Technologies was not coming to Discovery Park District. In a prepared release, the university said: “SkyWater has released its option on the land but remains a valued partner with research opportunities in the works.”
April 16, 2024: Among the nearly $700 million in state and local incentives for SK hynix was the second-ever Innovation Development District – a relatively new Indiana Economic Development Corp. tool rolled out in state law in 2022. The new state laws allowed the IEDC to use an Innovation Development Districts to reap and control the majority of property taxes, along with sales tax and state and local income taxes from the development. According to state law, local governments are guaranteed at least 12% of that revenue. In this case, West Lafayette first would have to relinquish a city-controlled tax increment finance district on the land and give control over revenues on the 90 acres to the state’s public-private economic development arm. In the weeks after the announcement, West Lafayette Mayor Erin Easter said the city was still negotiating the “at least 12%” part of that deal: “We’re still working things out.” At that point, the SK hynix site was still listed as the 90 acres in Purdue Research Park, west of Yeager Road.
Nov. 21, 2024: In a move designed to clear the way for the IEDC’s Innovation Development District for the SK hynix’s initial site, the West Lafayette Redevelopment Commission introduced a proposal that would pull the initial 90-acre parcel in the Purdue Research Park from the city’s KCB Tax Increment Financing District. The move came as the city hustled to do its part to line up potential state and federal incentive deals for SK hynix before new administrations elected a few weeks earlier took over at the Indiana Statehouse and the White House. The move was technical in nature, but it started to reveal connected plans for a neighboring piece of Purdue Research Park land, north of Kalberer Road between Yeager Road and County Road 50 West.
According to IEDC officials, the IEDC and SK hynix had signed an Innovation Development District fund grant agreement in June 2024. According to the document, available on the IEDC’s transparency portal, the agreement runs from Dec. 12, 2023, to Dec. 31, 2055. It offers a maximum grant amount of $712,183,430. That’s based on a return of 45% of the state incremental tax revenues and 52.8% of the local incremental tax revenues over 30 years, starting in 2026, according to the agreement.
By November, Mayor Erin Easter said discussions continued with the IEDC about what the Innovation Development District deal would look like for the city.
But the West Lafayette Redevelopment Commission’s moves that day proposed carving out other portions of the KCB Tax Increment Finance district to create what was dubbed the Research Advancement District. That TIF district would bring in land near the SK hynix ground, stretching east to County Road 50 West, expected to attract support businesses for the semiconductor giant and provide local property tax revenue.
That later became known as Site B for SK hynix.
Dec. 3, 2024: In a split vote, the West Lafayette City Council gave its blessing to the changes to the city’s tax increment finance district, including parsing out the initial site for SK hynix and setting up a new city TIF district where the company’s suppliers might go, east of Yeager Road. The lone vote against the measure came from council member David Sanders. Before his vote, Sanders said he couldn’t support anything that gave money and control to the Indiana Economic Development Corp. The measure was sent back to the West Lafayette Redevelopment Commission for final consideration and approval.
Jan. 17, 2025: The West Lafayette Redevelopment Commission tabled the TIF district maneuvers for a second time in as many months, saying the city was waiting to finalize negotiations with the IEDC about what West Lafayette could count on from tax revenues and infrastructure improvements from the deal, beyond the 12% minimum guaranteed under the law. At that point, that agreement hadn’t been reached after months of negotiations, Larry Oates, president of the West Lafayette Redevelopment Commission, said during its meeting. Oates suggested the delay in the final vote to protect the city and Tippecanoe School Corp. until a deal is finalized that would make sure costs related to roads, wastewater treatment and other infrastructure tied to the SK hynix facility were covered. “This is the final approval, and we’re holding our cards tight to our chest,” Oates said in January. “I don't want it to be thought out in the public that this is something that we're not interested in. We are very interested, in fact, highly interested in this entire project. We want to see this happen, but we want to see it happen the right way, so that we have the proper growth and support for our governmental entities within this district once it's done.” As of now, that vote was postponed again in February and as recently as March 16.
March 16, 2025: Ahead of an industrial rezoning request for 121 acres north of Kalberer Road, between Yeager Road and County Road 50 West, PRF officials informed county planners that SK hynix was looking at that land as its advanced chip packaging facility. Previously, the request to rezone the land from single-family residential to I3/heavy industrial use didn’t have specific plans attached, beyond assurances that it was being set aside for future suppliers for SK hynix’s work in mass producing high-bandwidth memory for the AI market. Residents in nearby neighborhoods, already circulating petitions against the I3 zoning, ramped up their protest, winning a 9-5 Area Plan Commission vote recommending denial of the rezoning request.
See both: SK hynix eyes new WL site for $3.87B chip facility, up for rezoning this week.
Rezoning for $3.8B SK hynix facility gets thumbs down from APC
March 26, 2025: SK hynix officials ask the West Lafayette City Council to postpone a final vote on the rezoning request, so they could attempt to make their case during a series of community meetings.
April 11, 2025: Ahead of the first of three community meetings, SK hynix officials tell Based in Lafayette that they prefer the land between Yeager Road and County Road 50 West – a location the company referred to as “Site B,” compared to the initial site, now labeled “Site A” – because it was “ much bigger, spacious and more rectangular shaped,” and “more efficient” for the company. They said they’d started to move that direction in February, hoping to use Site A for some of the 143 suppliers expected to follow. “During the investment decision-making process, we were thinking that Site A and Site B would be both used as a complete ecosystem that houses both our facility but also our supply chain partners,” NK Kim, an SK hynix vice president told BiL. “But this was a learning opportunity for us that we should have listened more carefully to the local residents and made more effort to approach them and engage with them.”
FOR MORE: Here’s how the site planning and rezoning issues for SK hynix have played out over the past month:
March 16: SK hynix eyes new WL site for $3.87B chip facility, up for rezoning this week
March 20: Rezoning for $3.8B SK hynix facility gets thumbs down from APC
March 23: WL City Council survey: Still unsure on SK hynix rezoning
March 26: Rezone request for $3.8B SK hynix facility on hold, for now
April 19: Neighbors take to streets to protest $3.87B SK hynix chip site in West Lafayette
THIS AND THAT/OTHER READS …
The Hannah News Service, which publishes Indiana Legislative Insight, had a long read raising questions about the Indiana Economic Development Corp., the state’s quasi-governmental commerce arm, about audits and more looking into “documentation of deal making involving tens of millions of dollars that could not be produced amidst talk of handshake deals.” It starts this way: “Gov. Mike Braun on April 8 signed an executive order that will require increased transparency for non-profit foundations and corporations created to assist state government agencies. But we discovered that there’s a huuuuuge back story to this EO, which ostensibly resulted from an in-house review prompted by campaign pledges to review Indiana Economic Development Corp. practices.” In particular, the account looks at millions of dollars that flowed through IEDC-connected affiliates, including Elevate Ventures. The report got this response from state Sen. Spencer Deery, a West Lafayette Republican who has been among those calling for more transparency at the IEDC, including the days when the agency was eyeing aquifers in western Tippecanoe County as a source of water for the LEAP district 35 miles away in Lebanon: “To repeat what I have been saying since at least 2023, there should be no greater friend of economic development reform than economic development advocates. A new administration may have bought us time in preventing the proliferation of more problems like this, but the problems will return if the General Assembly fails to codify new expectations for the transparency and accountability of IEDC dollars.” Here’s the full story from Hannah News Service: “A need to Elevate transparency: $25M in state money goes where? Audits, Office of the Inspector General probes pending.”
Indiana school districts would no longer be told to include the concept of consent when dealing with sex education under changes to a bill this week. A story from Indiana Capital Chronicle’s Casey Smith told about how State Sen. Gary Byrne, R-Byrneville, announced the change in Senate Bill 442 during a committee hearing Monday. From Smith’s account: “Earlier versions of the legislation required any materials used to teach ‘human sexuality’ for grades 4-12 be approved by a school board and include instruction on ‘the importance of consent to sexual activity.’ … Byrne said he preferred to let school boards decide if local curricula include topics on consent. ‘(Teaching about consent) can still happen. We’re just not going to require that in this bill,’ he said. ‘This is a sensitive subject for many. I believe it may be different thoughts in different communities, and … this leaves, for the most part, local control on making those decisions.’” For more: “Last-minute change removes requirement for Indiana schools to teach consent in sex education.”
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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.
IEDC with SK Hynix “agreement runs from Dec. 12, 2023, to Dec. 31, 2055.” Is this agreement tied to the specific lands (site A and site B) selected?
Purdue should start putting ads on the pages you link :)