South Korean computer chip manufacturer, SK hynix has a $3.8 billion project in the works for West Lafayette where I live. The project, located in the Purdue Research Park, was announced last summer with a fair amount of excitement and not much opposition so far as I could tell. But a requested zoning change has precipitated a lot of discussion in the community with protests against “toxic industry” in our neighborhoods. For my part, on balance, I support the project. There are risks, but I think the potential rewards outweigh them.
Background
I’ve tried to add some information to the zoning map below so people unfamiliar with the situation can get their bearings.
As originally announced the facility was going to be located in the purple area (“Site A”) which has been zoned “I3” for decades. Earlier this year, however, a rezone request was made to convert the adjacent parcel to the east (“Site B”) into an I3 zone as well. SK hynix apparently believes that Site B will better suit its purposes and wants to have Site A available for suppliers. Both of these plots are owned by the Purdue Research Foundation and have been for quite a long time. However, over the decades, West Lafayette has expanded — for those who know Purdue but not the area generally, Mackey Arena is about 2.5 miles due south.
West Lafayette zoning in and around proposed SK hynix site.
The I3 zone is the least restrictive. The County’s zoning ordinance describes its intent for the I3 zone as being “To provide areas for industrial activity, contracting, warehousing and wholesaling, that are heavy in impact because more than just loading activities are conducted outside — and associated retail and service establishments and agricultural activities as identified in the Permitted Use Table.” When PRF filed the petition to rezone Site B to I3, signs started popping up in adjacent neighborhoods (such as my own in University Farm, southeast of “Site B”) urging opposition to “toxic heavy industry” in our neighborhoods.
The Area Plan Commission staff recommended approval (page 79 of the PDF if the direct link doesn’t work). In the rezone request and in the lead up to the Area Plan Commission meeting, PRF did not provide a lot of information about the reason for the rezone. I can’t recall if it was even made explicit, initially, that this was connected to the SK hynix project, though it seemed to be at least widely understood that this was the case. My strong suspicion would be that PRF was under some non-disclosure obligations and my less strong suspicion is that SK hynix did not really appreciate the nature of the building opposition.
Whatever the case, by the time of the Area Plan Commission meeting, while it was eventually disclosed that this was in connection with SK hynix who preferred Site B, there were a lot of people present who did not want this in their backyard and not much of a presence on behalf of SK hynix or PRF. The concerns raised by members of the public present at the meeting were unchecked. So, despite the staff recommendation in favor, APC itself voted against. Ultimately these actions are advisory. The West Lafayette City Council has the final say for rezone requests in the City.
Since the time of the APC meeting, SK hynix and PRF have been much more active. Two of three information sessions have been held with another one coming up (as I write this) tomorrow. PRF has provided an information site. The City Council vote is scheduled for this coming Monday.
Resistance to the Project
But, the opposition has been active as well. In a lot of ways, the dynamics surrounding the opposition to the chip project resemble the dynamics of the school board opposition I’ve blogged about at length. My participation in the school board battles has made me unhappily attuned to yard signage. I’d say the overlap between signs opposing the school board majority and signs opposing the chip project is high. But the overlap is, by no means, complete. Some good friends who have been with me in the trenches of the school board fights are not in favor of this project moving forward.
Not that I have any kind of cybersecurity background, but the “red team/blue team” parlance has captured my imagination. The blue team is trying to defend the network while the red team is trying to attack it. Abstracted from cybersecurity, the general concept is that the blue team is defending the institution and the red team is attacking.
In the school board context, it always felt like the red team had the advantage. The red team can scattershot critiques and claims, and the burden of proof is always on the blue team. When a red team critique fizzles out, it is quickly forgotten. When a blue team defense is inadequate, it is never forgotten. Institutional performance is, inevitably, nuanced and won’t satisfy everyone. Red team critiques can always hypothesize better outcomes or worst case scenarios. The blue team has a record to defend. The red team mostly does not, and counterfactuals are, by their nature, tough to disprove.
That’s the social media dynamic at least. In the echo chambers where these critiques get made, they can feel overwhelming. In the broader world, the critiques either aren’t heard so loudly or maybe the public is getting better at calibrating for them. In the West Lafayette school board context, at least, the critics of the institution have been at work for five or six years and have not yet, at least, taken a majority on the board.
Whether I’m accurately perceiving parallels in this chip manufacturing debate and whether “the establishment” promoting the project or the critics opposing the project will win the day remains to be seen. Folks opposed to the project have been active in my community, spreading signs, posting to Facebook community pages, distributing flyers and so forth.
(Some are reportedly getting a little *too* active – reportedly going beyond official City contact channels and “tracking down and calling personal cell phone numbers of council members and council members’ family, all of which are not public record, as well as finding all of their social media accounts such as Facebook and Instagram and trying to send messages to them and their family there too.”)
Folks supporting the project have not been as overt. It’s a familiar dynamic. I imagine people who are opposed will be motivated to attend the public hearing while the average citizen who supports this probably won’t feel the same impulse to attend.
What the vote means
Both sides have been a little ambiguous about what the vote represents. The actual vote is whether Site B will be rezoned as I3. If the vote is “no,” the zone will remain agricultural. Site A is already zoned I3 and has been for a long time. But the opponents have cast this as a vote to determine whether there will be “heavy industry” near our neighborhoods. They don’t seem to grapple too explicitly with the fact that Site A is already zoned “heavy industry” and is even closer to neighborhoods than Site B. The general vibe is that, if the City Council votes against the rezone, the parade of horribles goes away. When pressed on the existing I3 parcel, the fall back position is that we don’t want to double the industrial foot print.
For its part, SK hynix has not said that the deal falls apart if Site B doesn’t get rezoned. I think the impression they have given is that the project will move forward on Site A. When I express uncertainty, maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention and, instead, there have in fact been firm commitments as to what happens if the rezone fails. Or, maybe PRF and SK hynix are being a bit cagey.
A future where Site A contains the facility, blunts the impact of concerns raised by the opponents — if this industrial activity is going to happen one way or another, Site B is maybe better situated to mitigate the concerns. On the other hand, they really want the facility on Site B with suppliers on Site A, so the prospect of the $3.8 billion investment going away is good leverage toward motivating Council members to vote “yes” despite voices from the surrounding neighborhoods urging them to vote “no.”
If I am a Council member, I think I would approach this vote as if it is one for or against the project happening or not happening even though as I explained above, that’s not, technically, what the vote is about. Even if the Council votes in favor of the rezone, there is (as the saying goes) many a slip ‘twixt a cup and a lip. For reasons outside of any local control, the project might not move forward. On the flip side, even if the Council votes against the rezone, it might still move forward on Site A.
All of that said, I think a “yes” vote says “we’re in favor of this moving forward, let’s manage the negatives as best we can, and let’s try to amplify the positives.”
Meanwhile, a “no” vote says “maybe we can’t stop you, but we’re not going to help.” Given that Site A is already zoned I3, if the project moves forward on that site, the neighbors opposing the rezone probably don’t get much happier just because Site B is no longer in play. The justifications they propose for a “no” vote don’t change all that much as between Site A and Site B. Those arguments suggest that the project should go away altogether.
The environmental concerns
The broad tone of the environmental critiques generally give the impression that this factory will turn West Lafayette into a hell hole, unsafe for our children. Outrage over putting “toxic heavy industry next to a day care” is definitely something I’ve heard. Much is made over the chemicals involved. I can’t imagine the criticisms being more adamant if, rather than the proposed memory chip production lines and packaging facilities, the proposal was to install a strip mine next to a smelting plant.
Smelting plant or not, the fact remains, the chip facility will be working with materials you wouldn’t want to drink.
On the flip side, proponents point to things like applicable environmental regulations and facilities in other areas that apparently co-exist with neighborhoods without notable problems. (In an interview with a Purdue professor of electrical and computer engineering, he listed an Intel plant in Hillsboro, Oregon, a Texas Industry facility in Richardson, Texas, and another Intel facility in Chandler, Arizona.)
I’ve also seen proponents point to the industrial activity already going on close to our neighborhoods. For example, Anduril is right in the area, working with rocket fuel. Such defenses of the proposed chip plant locations are usually deflected. The defenses are coming from people with a vested interest in the project moving forward, not being sufficiently analogous, or – in the case of businesses like Anduril – being smaller.
I am not getting into the minutiae of this back and forth because I recognize that I am not at all qualified to evaluate the merits of these arguments. For example:
“Sodium *explodes* in the presence of water. Using chlorine on enemies is a *war crime!* That new restaurant is putting both in our kids’ food!”
That sounds bad! And then it turns out the restaurant is putting salt on the food. I’m exaggerating, of course. But you don’t have to get too far beyond that level of chemistry before me “doing my own research” is a bad idea.
A typical neighborhood gas station has thousands of gallons of volatile, explosive, toxic liquid going in and out every day. But, it’s familiar. So most of us don’t think too much about it. I really have no idea what’s already going on in the Purdue Research Park. I’m given to understand that they also handle chemicals I would not want to drink.
Ultimately, I trust our institutions and the regulations put in place to keep us safe. I recognize that this ends up sounding unbearably naive. Doomsayers inevitably seem wiser. Hell, sometimes they’re even right. And incredibly bad things do happen from time to time. Even if this project is a good choice, incredibly bad things could still happen. I cannot remotely promise that bad things happening are impossible.
However, if you look at our history, it’s tough to point to a time when people were safer. You can pick this or that bad thing that’s worse today than it was yesterday. But those worse things are generally offset in a myriad of ways in which things got better; problems we don’t worry about anymore because someone fixed them. And, in most cases, these improvements are because of the regulations and institutions we put in place to keep us safe.
It’s true that you can say that farm ground is safer than other business and industry activities, and that would be fair enough. But I don’t think that’s a great or realistic alternative. “Get busy living or get busy dying” was the line from Shawshank. Ball State economist Michael Hicks (in another context) has declared that, as a community, “you either grow or you shrink.”
Many folks like where they live and wish for those places to remain unchanged. I certainly understand that desire, but keeping things the same really isn’t an option. You either grow or shrink.
Growing places face problems, but these are happy problems. These places need to expand schools, roads and water service with tight budgets. They need to plan for new residential construction that will appeal to mobile residents, yet still be affordable to public servants — like teachers and police officers. It’s unfortunate we have to plan affordable housing for public employees, but that is the road we’ve taken and is best saved for a later column.
Growing places appeal to new residents and typically attract private amenities, such as restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses people like to have nearby. Growing places already have good schools and low crime rates. That is one of the reasons people move there. So, the challenge for these places is how to keep the schools good, the roads paved and the neighborhoods safe.
Shrinking places also face problems, but they are unhappy problems.
We’re going to have problems no matter what we do (and even if we do nothing at all.) I think West Lafayette should choose the path with happier problems.
What do we get out of the deal?
Most of the focus has been on the potential downsides. It’s pretty normal for humans to be risk averse. The present is known and, even if it’s not perfect, the problems feel manageable. By contrast, the future is dark and full of terrors. Big projects engender opposition. Subaru, which has been a critical addition to the community was a centerpiece of attacks by Evan Bayh as he successfully campaigned to become governor in 1988. I’m glad our city leaders did what was necessary to bring them to town.
While there are risks, on the other side of the ledger, I think it’s hard to overstate how big of a deal a $3.8 billion investment is in the context of West Lafayette. The certified assessed value for the city as a whole in the 2025 budget order was $1.6 billion. Now, this isn’t a straight forward taxing situation. The project is part of a state “innovation development district” where the state takes a healthy cut. I don’t think we’ve seen the exact terms of the deal. But, the statute provides for the locals to get at least 12% of the resulting revenue.
Given the amount of investment, we’re still talking about real money. and that’s before you get to the knock on effects. 1,000 jobs generating paychecks and local income taxes. Businesses that crop up in the area to serve SK hynix. Everyone involved eating at local restaurants, shopping at our grocery stores, and otherwise doing things that stimulate economic activity.
Also, not for nothing, but a lot of West Lafayette’s economic eggs are in the Purdue basket. Diversifying our local economy probably isn’t the worst idea.
Other locations
Some of the opponents of the rezone who live in the nearby neighborhoods seem to advocate for just about anywhere other than the present proposal. I think we need to resign ourselves to the idea that the choice is Site B, possibly Site A, or not at all. As I understand it, the project requires city water, city sewer, and land of a certain size with appropriate zoning. That takes rural Tippecanoe County off the table. Even if another parcel in West Lafayette were found that met that criteria, it’s still going to have neighbors.
The Discovery Park District, west of campus where Skywater was working on its own plant before that project fell through, has been pointed to as an option by people in the neighborhoods surrounding the Purdue Research Park. I’ve read online discussions suggesting that the available land at the Discovery Park District wasn’t large enough or not suitable. Candidly, I don’t know the truth of that one way or another. But, again, because it’s in the city, there will be neighbors, and the environmental concerns (whether they are dire, incidental, or somewhere in between) don’t go away. Also, projects like this don’t turn on a dime. I think our choices are Site B, maybe Site A, or not at all.
Conclusion
What else can I say? I think the potential rewards outweigh the potential risks. I do not have the background to evaluate the relevant chemistry. I think traffic, development, and all the rest of the challenges can be dealt with.
I tend to trust the voices that tell me that the risks are manageable more than the voices that tell me they are not. As this debate has progressed, the former have tended to provide a nuanced assessment. They have their biases to be sure, but nobody on the pro-side of the fence seems to be saying that the project will be an unmitigated blessing. There are challenges. There are two sides to the cost/benefit ledger. On the other side, I do seem to hear voices telling me that there is only downside; rarely acknowledging a potential upside.
Knowing that the world is a messy place, my tendency is to find the nuanced position more persuasive. I’m skeptical of certainty. Could I be wrong? Of course.
At the end of the day, given the potential benefits, given the measures in place to manage risk, given the fact that Site A is already zoned I3, and given that other communities seem to be making this kind of project work, my preference would be that the Council support the project coming to our community.
