Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces More Than $51 Million in Fast NY Grants Awarded to Five Projects Across Upstate New York

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that more than $51 million has been awarded to improve five locations under the Focused Attraction of Shovel-Ready Tracts New York grant program. FAST NY is designed to prepare and develop sites across the state to jumpstart New York’s shovel-readiness and increase its attractiveness to large employers and high-tech manufacturing companies. The program, administered by Empire State Development, helps to diversify New York State’s economy by supporting site improvements that encourage new investments to grow businesses and create jobs. Since its inception, FAST NY has awarded more than $283 million to 34 sites located throughout Upstate New York. Governor Hochul secured an additional $100 million in the FY26 Budget to expand the FAST NY program and build on its successes.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor’s Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Good morning, good morning. Great feedback, great feedback. Nice to travel all over the State to make sure I could hit all 10 REDCs many, many times over the course of years. For people, particularly like Larry, 14 years leading this extraordinary gathering of people where you've put your hearts out there, your brilliant minds, your compassion for your communities, and really making a real difference for New Yorkers.

So to the entire REDC, I want to thank all of you. For those who are newer and those who've been with us a long time, how grateful I am. And also, Hope Knight — make sure you give her another round of applause. She's the driver of many of our great economic successes here.

Also, I have some elected officials. As a fellow elected official, I know they all like to be recognized. I also want to give a special shout out to our County Executive, Tony Picente, who has been overseeing the transformation of his own county; and it's quite amazing what you've been doing there — let's give a round of applause to Tony Picente. We have our State elected officials, Senator Joe Griffo, Marianne Buttenschon from the Assembly, Assemblymember Robert Smullen — anybody else from the Legislature? All right, thank you very much.

And we have Nishant Roy from Chobani. And I just want you to go back and tell everybody at Chobani, I'm three minutes late for coming in because I had to have my Chobani yogurt before I walked in the door — that is what feeds me every day for lunch and has been for many years.

Also MVCC President Randy VanWagoner has joined us. But, this takes me back to a place I cherish. I love the history of this region, the great story, the Erie Canal — as we celebrate the 200th anniversary — and all the communities that really were born during that time of great exploration and ambition by the government, including the Governor back then who President Thomas Jefferson thought was pretty insane to agree to an idea that we literally dig a ditch across the entire State of New York. But, it turned out it was a visionary endeavor and we still benefit from that.

And I also know that this is an area that has everything from Old Fords, the gateway to the Adirondacks, and been through here many, many times on my family vacations, and always stop and enjoy all the attractions, the restaurants, the diners. So I've been coming here my entire life. Herkimer diamonds — this place I believe is also like a diamond, and many, many people have yet to discover this.

But my job is working — through this entity — to continue to stimulate more businesses, so guess what? That brings more jobs here. And we've had incredible success here in Upstate because as an Upstater, the first Upstate Governor in 100 years, first one from Buffalo since Grover Cleveland in the 1800s. So it’s been a while since you had someone who's really lived the experience of what it's like when our communities that were — our bread and butter was textiles, and carpeting and manufacturing ceramics. All the way in Buffalo, we made steel, and photonics in Rochester, and Syracuse, air conditioning, and all of those have gone by the wayside.

So what do you do in its place? How do you reimagine your communities? And we've found that there's so many opportunities, especially leaning into our agricultural society, our community here that most people outside of New York do not have any idea that we're top in dairy production among many states, and our crops – our output from agriculture here and across Upstate New York is second to none. And it's a large part of our land mass is dedicated to agriculture. So we have an opportunity to foster opportunities for businesses like Chobani with our really growing dairy industry — it's really important to me.

As I said, we've been part of this community a long, long time, and I just know that there's more we can do as government. When communities fall on hard times, sometimes we need to be lifted up and just get that little extra boost. And I will continue doing that here in the Mohawk Valley. It's been a great passion of mine – this whole 190 corridor, and I'm trying to make it an innovation corridor as well. What does that mean? It means creating opportunities by creating the place for businesses to go to, especially national businesses that are looking at sites all across the country.

We really have to put our best foot forward and have incentives in place, but also having sites that are shovel-ready because time is money to businesses. If you can show that decisions have already been made — this is where we'll accept business, welcome business, make sure the infrastructure's in place — that's how you get the advantage when we're competing all across the country. And that’s what gave us a real strategic advantage a few years ago when we landed Micron. They were literally looking at Texas. Seriously, there was a Texas community that put out a press release that we landed Micron. Sorry, Texas, you're not winning there either.

And we made sure that there was space, made sure that the county stepped up and was able to do what they can to get the shovel ready-site and then you know, the history. And Micron alone will be a great catalyst for what I call, as I said, “The innovation corridor.” Because businesses are not just waiting for it to be built to come, they're already coming now in anticipation of what is America's largest private sector investment, not just today, but in history. That's $100 billion, 50,000 jobs, and it really gets much better than that.

And the spinoff effect — this is not just the Central New York–Finger Lakes region, the spillover over here is going to be also part of the revival of our Upstate economy. We have Wolfspeed, I came to events celebrating Wolfspeed right here, and they could have gone anywhere. Edwards Vacuum, that’s again another call I made over to England saying, “We hear you might be interested in coming to the U.S. and expanding, and how about being part of the supply chain for Micron and other companies?”

So they all feed off each other. And that's what I'm talking about, is creating this ecosystem, something that drives what you do at the REDC: how do businesses fit with each other and how do we attract them, actively recruit them? And so we have to make sure that we have, as I mentioned, shovel-ready sites. I think that is what gives us the leverage and the power to be the winners when there is a competitive environment for companies to go anywhere they want.

In 2023, I first announced this and had no idea how much growth that this would stimulate just by saying — a shovel-ready program across sites to help employers expand, but also to attract new manufacturers. And just in two years, we awarded over $232 million to 32 projects across the State and have made improvements to over 4,000 acres of land that is now ready to welcome businesses. That is extraordinary. And many of the sites had been long abandoned or never thought that they would ever come to full life the way they have, and now they've been transformed, like Siemens and the horse heads and Edwards Vacuum as I mentioned in Genesee County and also Fairlife manufacturing will be — I believe I was told — the northeast’s largest dairy processing facility, which Chobani's very interested in. And then I found out they may be the largest in the world. They keep expanding. And again, they needed a shovel ready site and commitments from the State. And so that's going to be transformative.

But also, the last time I was here was that April day when we announced the $1 billion investment, and I heard now it's a $1.2 billion investment by Chobani right here, a million square feet facility and creating over 1,000 jobs. And that was one of the greatest days of my life to know that I would never run out of Chobani yogurt because it feeds me, it takes care of me. So that was huge.

I had talked to our great friend, the CEO, and met him in New York City. Certainly they get offers from other states. Everybody wants Chobani. But how do we make sure we have the environment where they can stay where they were born, but they also know that there's a lot of people knocking on their door with very lucrative packages and how do we win that competition? So it was so exciting to be here, but I want to make sure you know that I also believe in this program so much, so we added another $100 million to it. It is now over $300 million.

And today, I want to announce that we have decided where this year's round of $51 million is going to go. One of them, one of the reasons I'm in Oneida County here, you're the big winner. Oneida County's a big winner. We're announcing $32.6 million for Oneida County to fund critical infrastructure at the Griffiss Triangle Site where Chobani is building. That's how you get a company to yes — you make those kinds of commitments. And we're going to continue to propel projects like that for decades to come.

So let me close with this, I know many decades of decline and despair and people left the area; populations dwindled compared to what they had been. And I want to thank all the business leaders, the community leaders, the elected officials, the drivers of change here and certainly this REDC here for never giving up, always having the faith that the better days do lie ahead. And it is that sense of optimism that is rewarded here today, that can do spirit where we'll think back about our great history, but we're not wed to that story. We're right now, today, writing the new story of the future and it starts with projects like these that I believe will feed an entire ecosystem with more businesses understanding the exceptional quality of life here and the more affordability of homes, and just the access to the most beautiful resources we have in our state.

And so I hope all of you call this region home — I know it's just not one county, this whole region home — know, as someone who doesn't live here but comes here as often as I can, know that there's an extraordinary life that you live here and the businesses thrive here and never, ever take that for granted. It is uniquely special. So congratulations to Oneida County and the other projects.