Thirty-five years of paperwork explain how a wooded corner of Clay became the site of an $89 billion chip fab, a battery-storage fight, and a preemptive ban on data centers. Every entry below links to its sources — our own meeting records (■) or outside primary documents (↗): state announcements, agency filings, SEC disclosures, and court papers.
NYSDOT opens public input on 'Central New York Forward' — reworking Routes 31 and 481 and the I-81 interchanges — with open houses at Clay Town Hall and comments due August 14.
With Chapter 209 in force, the three battery applications were scheduled to return to the Town Board. No minutes have been posted and no outcome has been reported; we're watching for the record.
An executive order imposes the nation's first statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers — up to a year — while the state writes grid, water, and ratepayer standards. Clay's local pause suddenly has state-law reinforcement above it.
Micron pours Fab 1's first concrete, raises its planned U.S. investment past $250 billion through 2035, and reports $675 million already paid to New York contractors, with over 80% of site workers state residents. First wafers still target ~2030.
Clay adopts a law letting projects over $100 million replace standard permit fees — which would have totaled ~$69 million on Fab 1 alone — with negotiated host agreements. A $30 million Micron agreement is moved and seconded, but no vote is recorded before adjournment.
The same session reportedly adopts the 12-month moratorium on data centers, AI computing, and crypto-mining. Nothing had been proposed; the town wanted the pause before anything was.
News reports Clay adopting its Battery Energy Storage System law (Town Code Chapter 209) with setbacks, emergency-response plans, and wetland protections. The town has not yet posted minutes for this session; we'll link the official record when it appears.
IBEW opposes the data-center moratorium; residents speak for it; Deputy Supervisor Bick cites a county-funded impact study underway. The hearing closes without a vote that night.
The Town Board calls a hearing on a 12-month moratorium covering large data centers, AI computing facilities, and cryptocurrency mining — the only appearance of 'crypto' in Clay's entire public record. Officials say it's explicitly preemptive.
Setbacks drop, the height limit lands at 16 feet, and the fire-response standard doubles from one hour to two, while the three applications wait. Developers still call it too restrictive.
Reports of a massive 'Renalli Super DC' concept push neighboring Lysander to a six-month data-center moratorium — the closest actual data-center proposal to Clay, and a proximate trigger for Clay's own pause.
Local Law No. 3 of 2026 freezes new battery applications while the town writes its rulebook — and the same night, the board schedules the first hearing on the substantive law.
Chair Borton and member Palumbo step aside from all three battery referrals, disclosing business ties to the applicant. Two weeks later the remaining members urge the Town Board to write a comprehensive battery ordinance before deciding anything.
At the first battery hearings, residents and fire officials press on emergency response. Nexamp's dispatch is in Massachusetts; Carson Power volunteers that the industry has logged 26 container fires in 10 years. All three hearings are adjourned.
The Town Board calls hearings on special permits for Nexamp's Wetzel Road and Long Branch sites and Carson Power's 12-unit Goguen Drive system — Tesla Megapack-scale storage, all at once, in a town with no battery rules.
Clearing begins the Monday after groundbreaking and finishes March 6, beating the March 31 deadline set by endangered-bat protections that bar cutting April through October.
Hochul, Schumer, and Commerce Secretary Lutnick break ground; Micron promises production within four years. Hours later, Neighbors for a Better Micron and Jobs to Move America file their Article 78 challenge to the environmental review in Albany.
Final plat approval for Micron's parcel and site-plan approval for the RailWorks spur (with a decommissioning condition) complete the local approvals two days before groundbreaking.
The CHIPS Program Office approves fund disbursement, with the Fish & Wildlife biological opinion and historic-preservation agreement attached.
The Town Board unanimously converts the three residual White Pine parcels from residential-agricultural to industrial, and abandons a strip of old Route 31 roadbed to clear Micron's title.
State permits authorize impacts to 176 acres of state wetlands and ~6,413 linear feet of streams, with mitigation on five Oswego County sites. The same permits become targets in the lawsuit filed a month later.
The Planning Board grants preliminary plat approval consolidating the assembled properties into White Pine Commerce Park Phase 1 — a quarter century of land assembly reduced to a single deed.
The ZBA unanimously ratifies its October variances for the campus and rail spur, completing the town-level zoning record.
At a special meeting, the agency adopts its environmental findings, authorizes the land transfer, and approves the largest local incentive deal in county history: Micron pays ~$84.5M in lieu of ~$368M in property taxes over 49 years.
Azalia King sues OCIDA after receiving a 90-day eviction notice from the Caughdenoy Road home she sold in 2005 with a life-estate agreement. Within weeks the county settles: $3 million, and she leaves by May 2026.
OCIDA accepts the Final EIS (DEC's completion notice follows Nov 12). Buried in it: Fab 1's first operation pushed to as late as Q3 2030, full buildout 2041, full production 2045.
At Clay Town Hall, OCIDA hears the public on Micron's local package. Watchdog group Reinvent Albany tallies the ask — atop $5.5 billion in state credits.
Clay's Zoning Board of Appeals grants area variances for the Micron campus and the RailWorks spur — including cutting required parking from 29,568 spaces to 2,900.
Four fabs over 16 years, 140-foot buildings, air filtered 120 times an hour, 24-hour operation — the full scope of the project, presented across a folding table in a town hall meeting room.
The Planning Board takes up RailWorks' site plan for a Caughdenoy Road rail spur to deliver construction aggregate to the Micron site by rail — the first of the project's supporting facilities to reach a town board.
The Town Board approves a retainer and cost-reimbursement agreement with Micron 7-0, and applies jointly with Cicero for a grant to design a recreational trail from Brewerton to the fab site.
OCIDA and the federal CHIPS office accept the Draft EIS; the comment window runs June 27 to August 11. Roughly 1,270 comments arrive from about 1,050 people — PFAS, wetlands, and the pace of review dominate. The window's length becomes a count in the later lawsuit.
The Town Board hears Local Law No. 1 of 2025, fixing a mis-cited code section so construction noise in Industrial-2 districts — Micron's zone — is exempt from the noise ordinance. Residents press on the exemption's open-ended duration.
Commerce finalizes the binding award: $4.6 billion for New York, $1.5 billion for Idaho, milestone-based disbursement. Micron's SEC filings had already disclosed two years of schedule slips by this point.
The Public Service Commission's Energy Storage Roadmap order funds 4,500 MW of new procurement — the push that sends developers like Nexamp and Carson Power hunting for sites in towns like Clay.
Biden announces the preliminary federal agreement in Syracuse — direct funding for two Clay fabs plus Boise, with eligibility for $7.5 billion in loans.
The Army Corps publishes its Notice of Intent for a federal EIS, triggered by Micron's Clean Water Act application: filling ~226 acres of federal wetlands on campus plus 18 on the rail spur, and 7,523 linear feet of streams.
OCIDA, as lead agency, issues a positive declaration requiring a full Environmental Impact Statement for the Micron project.
After BESS fires in East Hampton, Warwick, and near Chaumont, the state convenes an Inter-Agency Fire Safety Working Group. Its recommendations become the 2025 state fire code — the safety floor in place when Clay's proposals arrive.
Hochul signs a two-year bar on new air permits for carbon-fueled plants powering proof-of-work mining. It lapses in 2024 — but no crypto operation is ever documented in Clay or Onondaga County.
Micron and the state sign the Community Investment Framework — $500M for workforce, education, and housing ($250M Micron, $100M state, $150M partners) — during the President's visit.
Up to four 600,000-sq-ft cleanrooms over 20+ years at White Pine: ~9,000 direct Micron jobs among ~50,000 total regional jobs, up to $5.5 billion in state Green CHIPS credits, and a $500 million community fund.
OCIDA authorizes condemnation for ~320 additional acres and holds the required hearing; the Institute for Justice backs a resident coalition. No lawsuit is ever filed — nearly all owners sell at premium prices.
Hochul signs the state law offering up to $10 billion in credits for chip projects investing $3B+ with 500+ jobs — with prevailing-wage and community-benefit strings. This is the vehicle behind Micron's later $5.5 billion state package.
$52.7 billion in federal semiconductor incentives — the subsidy framework that makes a $100 billion upstate fab imaginable. Micron pledges $40 billion to memory manufacturing the same day.
The County Legislature routes $20M in federal stimulus to OCIDA for land acquisition, later adding $25M for site work — the funds that bought roughly three dozen Burnet Road properties at multiples of assessed value. Total assembly cost over 25 years: about $29.2M.
OCIDA's hearing notice records the math: 648 acres owned, 282 under contract, 320 to be acquired — 'if necessary, pursuant to the Eminent Domain Procedure Law.'
OCIDA buys the 198-acre Wooding property, then sends purchase options with confidentiality clauses to every Burnet Road homeowner. The Clay Homes Preservation Coalition forms in response.
New York's CLCPA mandates 70% renewables by 2030 and a zero-emission grid by 2040, with a statutory energy-storage target — the legal engine behind the battery-storage buildout that reaches Clay in 2026.
The Taiwanese chip giant evaluates the site and rejects it as too small, then builds in Phoenix. County Executive McMahon later cites the rejection as the trigger for super-sizing the park.
OCIDA pays $63,125 for the rebrand and accepts a 700-page draft environmental study for the 339-acre park.
A first-round Regional Economic Development Council award funds a new sewer line, wetland mitigation, and road improvements — the defining pre-Micron infrastructure investment.
The pharma giant considers the park for a ~550-job plant but chooses Devens, MA. The most concrete near-miss of the 2000s.
Under threat of eminent domain, OCIDA buys the King home on Caughdenoy Road plus 47 acres for $330,750, with a rent-free life estate. Twenty years later that promise becomes a lawsuit.
The state's SEMI-NY program certifies 'qualified' semiconductor sites and OCIDA pursues the designation for the Clay park. The dot-com bust kills the first fab hopes — the site's semiconductor ambition predates Micron's arrival by 24 years.
Onondaga County buys seven properties through the 1990s to form the original park. A sign goes up; the land sits vacant for two decades.
OCIDA and the Syracuse Chamber commission a feasibility study that selects the wooded site in Clay as the county's preferred large-industrial park — near National Grid's Clay substation, with highway access and industrial zoning. Everything since starts here.
Filed at 5:20 p.m. on groundbreaking day. Seven causes of action challenge the environmental review: a 47-day comment window on a 719-page draft, no 'hard look' at PFAS (which first appeared as an appendix in the final EIS), a deficient wetlands analysis (~408 acres of federal wetlands on the campus, ~200 permanently lost), and a climate-law justification the petitioners call arbitrary. They seek to annul the FEIS and every permit built on it — but sought no injunction, and construction has proceeded throughout. Micron's May 2026 SEC filing discloses the case as pending; no rulings have been reported.
Azalia King, 91, sold her Caughdenoy Road home to OCIDA in 2005 with a written agreement letting her live there for life. In September 2025 the agency served a 90-day eviction notice and moved to condemn her remaining land; she sued. More than 150 people packed the hearing in her support. The county settled within weeks: $450,000 for the home and $2.5 million for 6.5 acres across the street, with move-out by May 1, 2026. County Executive McMahon: 'There was no scenario where we could have had Mrs. King living there and Micron happened.'
OCIDA authorized eminent domain for ~320 acres along Burnet Road in 2022, and the Institute for Justice backed a resident coalition preparing to fight it. No lawsuit was ever filed: nearly every owner sold, at prices well above assessed value, and condemnation was never exercised. The threat, residents and reporters documented, did the work on its own.