SK hynix $3.87B site rezoning OK’d in marathon WL City Council session

West Lafayette City Council votes 6-3 to rezone South Korean company’s preferred site for semiconductor facility plans. Neighbors leave fuming.

The West Lafayette City Council agreed early Tuesday morning to a rezoning plan geared to clear the way for a $3.87 billion advanced chip packing facility in West Lafayette, after weeks of pushback from residents in nearby neighborhoods and a marathon session with overflow crowds before the city council.

The West Lafayette City Council voted 6-3 for the request to rezone 121 acres north of Kalberer Road, between Yeager Road and County Road 50 West.

Many in an overflow crowd who were part of nearly seven hours of often emotional testimony ahead of the vote walked out of city hall at 1:30 a.m. claiming the vote was a done deal.

“Sadly predictable,” Debra Ellis, a West Lafayette resident, said.

The city council vote came a year after SK hynix announced plans to come to West Lafayette to build a 340,000-square-foot R&D and manufacturing facility to assemble high-bandwidth memory chips crucial to a growing AI computing market. At the time, the project – aiming at 1,000 jobs, with another 3,000 for direct suppliers – was touted as the most expensive economic development catch in Indiana history and considered a fundamental first piece in what’s envisioned as a larger “Silicon Heartland.” The company plans to be in production by 2028.

The vote also came seven weeks after an Area Plan Commission vote of 9-5 recommending against industrial zoning for the site, given lingering environmental questions, traffic issues and complaints about the sheer scope of the project being so close to University Farm, Arbor Chase, Amberleigh Village and other West Lafayette subdivisions.

It’s likely SK hynix could have begun construction on its initial location – on 90 nearby acres on the west side of Yeager Road, dubbed “Site A” and already zoned for heavy industry – until it indicated a preference to build on the 121 acres just to the east, where the ground was zoned for residential use. That became known as “Site B.”

That opened the door for community pushback, which didn’t let up during Monday’s public hearing before the city council vote, after SK hynix and PRF officials spent the past month trying to win over neighborhood concerns and city council sentiment through a series of community meetings.

SK hynix and PRF responded Monday with a compromise, offering to downzone Site A to office/research uses to soften the industrial feel of that part of the Purdue Research Park.

“We pride ourselves on choosing sites for our facilities that align with our values,” NK Kim, senior vice president of SK hynix West Lafayette, told city council members Monday.

“And, when our plant becomes operational, there will be a large number of locally hired employees working there. They will become not just our colleagues but also our family members and valued assets,” Kim said. “Which is why, it is inconceivable that we would place them in harm’s way by exposing them to an unsafe working environment.”

Council members Larry Leverenz, Michelle Dennis, Stacey Burr, Iris O’Donnell Bellisario, Colin Lee and James Blanco voted yes. Voting no: Kathy Parker, Laila Veidemanis and David Sanders.

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