Foxconn Lands in Milwaukee
Foxconn plane at General Mitchell, closed-door meetings scheduled in Racine County.
Foxconn Jet. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.
Foxconn has come to Wisconsin, literally.
While the company and state are still rumored to be negotiating over an electronics factory that could employ 10,000 people, a private jet affiliated with the company has landed at General Mitchell International Airport. It’s parked just outside of the observation area along E. Layton Ave.
The airplane arrived in Milwaukee at 3:06 p.m. Sunday, having departed Long Beach Airport near Los Angeles, CA at 11:41 a.m. What Foxconn executives, perhaps including founder and chairman Terry Gou, have been up to in Wisconsin since then is unclear. But the village boards of Mount Pleasant and Sturtevant are scheduled to meet in closed session this afternoon to discuss “a potential future development project in Racine County.” It’s hard to imagine that’s about anything other than Foxconn.
President Donald Trump was the one who broke the Foxconn news when on a Wisconsin visit with Governor Scott Walker on June 13th he said “Just backstage, we were negotiating with a major, major, incredible manufacturer of phones and computers and televisions, and I think they’re going to give the governor a very happy surprise very soon.” On June 30th Racine Mayor John Dickert confirmed to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that representatives affiliated with the proposed deal have approached the City of Racine about providing water and sewer service to a large plant outside the city limits. Racine County has approved a $500,000 letter of credit to the Racine County Economic Development Corp. to “cover expenses related to economic development projects.”
The Foxconn airplane is a Gulfstream G650. It’s registration (B-99988) identifies its country of origin as Taiwan where Foxconn, known formally as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd, is headquartered. The jet has a retail price of $65 million. It was purchased on March 21st, 2016 according to Corporate Jet Investor.
The company was originally scheduled to build a factory in Pennsylvania in 2013, but work on that has yet to move forward.
Foxconn customers include Apple, Amazon, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. The company has 12 factories in China and a number of other facilities across the globe. As of 2012, the company produced approximately 40 percent of all consumer electronics. One factory in China, known informally as Foxconn City, employs approximately 230,000 people. According to a New York Times report in 2012 “over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day.”
Foxconn Jet
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More about the Foxconn Facility
- Foxconn Will Get State Subsidy For 2022 - Joe Schulz - Dec 11th, 2023
- Mount Pleasant Approves Microsoft Deal on Foxconn Land - Evan Casey - Nov 28th, 2023
- Mount Pleasant Deal With Microsoft Has No Public Subsidies - Evan Casey - Nov 14th, 2023
- Microsoft, State Announce Massive Data Center Expansion, Land Purchase - Joe Schulz - Nov 11th, 2023
- Gov. Evers Announces Microsoft Makes Major Investment in Wisconsin - Gov. Tony Evers - Nov 10th, 2023
- State Can’t Regulate We Energies $100 Million Project for Microsoft - Joe Schulz - Sep 20th, 2023
- Foxconn Selling Green Bay, Eau Claire ‘Centers’ - Joe Schulz - Aug 16th, 2023
- Murphy’s Law: Foxconn Deal Is Still Costing Taxpayers - Bruce Murphy - Jul 6th, 2023
- Microsoft Will Pay $50 Million For Mount Pleasant Data Center Site - Evan Casey - Apr 20th, 2023
- Microsoft Data Center Proposed for Foxconn Land - Evan Casey - Mar 29th, 2023
Read more about Foxconn Facility here
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This would be absolutely huge news.
Trying not to get my hopes up too much, but this would be such a feather in the cap of Wisconsin, and our mounting ‘jobs Renaissance.’ Great for a community like Racine, and this could also draw people across the border from Northern IL to work as well.
Hopefully they won’t need to install safety nets around their buildings to thwart suicides.
Guardedly optimistic-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
Fundamentally this is great news, but it’s sad to see it be a car-dependent wasteland style development. I’d take half the jobs if this were placed in a legitimate urban environment. But hay, can’t complain if this happens!
Tyrell hit it on the nose! Another project to expand “roadway development” etc, that ignores the needs of cities. Car centric America is doomed if we don’t turn this around soon.
While this appears to be great news just remember that FOXCONN failed to follow through on plans to build a plant in Pennsylvania. If the company actually selects Wisconsin for one of its plants it could also spark the economy in other ways such as increased demand for suicide netting which could benefit Carron Net Company Inc. of Two Rivers Wisconsin!!!
Sharon, reports of “car centric America’s” death are greatly exaggerated.
Yes, also there are like 10 other states in the running, so I’m afraid this means nothing until it means something…
While I understand having issues with the potential ex-urban location that would require driving, my understanding is they require 100+ acres for their plant, and close proximity to the interstate. If Ikea spent years trying to locate a 25-40 acre parcel, I can understand why it would necessitate locating further out from population centers.
@John – IKEA obviously needs to be close to the urban center to be within a short drive of many customers.
The RFP for Foxconn specifies 1,000 acres, so they’re looking for something roughly similar in size to all of the Menomonee Valley (1,200 acres). So yes, they’re going to end up on the fringe somewhere.
No modern factory is going to require 50k workers. Get real, robots will make all of the TV panels and there will be 100 people there to fix the robots. Even WashCoRepub will have to admit that this news won’t end up helping his friend Scott too much in the end. Plus, we’ll all vomit when we hear how much WI will give them for the “privilege” of adding those 100 workers…likely an overall net loss and that’s not even counting the exurban location and loss of whatever those 1000 acres are doing now (like state forest or other land reserve — don’t think I’m kidding here either)