B-Roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Celebrates Topping Out of NY Creates’ $1 Billion Nanofab Reflection

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced the “topping out” of NanoFab Reflection, the cornerstone of the Governor’s $1 billion investment in NY Creates’ Albany NanoTech Complex, marking a major milestone for the $10 billion initiative and for New York State’s strategy to strengthen America’s semiconductor leadership. The new facility will be the home of the nation’s first publicly owned, High NA EUV Lithography Center, with the most advanced chip research and development capabilities anywhere in the world.

B-ROLL of the Governor signing the EUV Center and the “topping out” by Ironworkers Local 12 can be found on YouTube and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format.

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 of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.

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

 Thank you. Good morning, everyone. It's a lot warmer in here than it was outside. Didn't see all of you out there with eight degree RealFeel temperature on your skin watching the beam go up, but I hope that you had a chance to see it here.

It is so great to be with Dave Anderson again. I love what sets New York State apart from all the others. We have creative geniuses, people who see and have visions of concepts, and ideas and opportunities where others cannot possess that same capability. So we have that here in this place and in Dave Anderson. I want to thank him for helping come up with this idea three years ago, and it took — actually, that's not as long as things usually take. I think that's pretty fast to be able to be lifting the beam today. Looking at a project that's going to be starting to have more milestones in March and June, and certainly by October of the next year. And I want to give you a special round of applause for everything you and the whole team here at New York CREATES does.

I thank Commissioner Hope Knight. She was out there in the cold with me. She's tough and has traveled the state in search of opportunities to strengthen New York's economy, and it's really grown dramatically under her leadership as well. So, let's give her another round of applause.

My partners in government: Assemblymember Gabriela Romero is here, Assemblymember John McDonald's here, Mayor Kathy Sheehan and our Mayor-elect Dorcey Applyrs from the City of Albany. Let's give them all a round of applause as well. Thank you. Thank you. And our partners in industry and labor. Labor was in the house outside when it was very cold out there, but these iron workers have been working for a long time and all the other partners, and it's truly making a difference.

When I first got elected, I wanted to do something really significant as an upstate, or the first upstate Governor in a long time. First Governor from Buffalo since Grover Cleveland. I witnessed the decline of a region that was once proud — upstate. Its legacy was built on manufacturing. We built things, we knew how to do this, and many of the immigrants who came over without a lot of skills, but willing to work hard, could live a good life, live the American dream. Like my grandfather could raise eight kids in a tiny house, but he had a union card and a job at the steel plant. And his brother Tommy, was an iron worker who would make that steel into beautiful buildings. And there were long shoremen and so many others bringing in the steel from the Midwest and other component parts and shipping it out along the Great Lakes.

So I saw the whole system, how it worked when I was very young, but I also, as a young adult, saw the decline — and it hurt. It was painful to see people who believed in a dream that thought that the manufacturer would always be there, could not foresee the foreign competition or businesses going to warmer weather and a variety of reasons for leaving Upstate New York, and it hit Albany, and Utica, and Syracuse, and Rochester and Buffalo particularly hard.

So I had a vision when I became Governor. If we could find the next new wave, the next revolution, and to put a stake in the ground and let New York be the premier place in the nation, the world for that, then we can allow people to have that dream again. And draw the smartest, and attract the smartest people you'll ever see right back to our state instead of them getting a great education here and then going elsewhere for their futures.

My friends, all that is happening. And I'm so proud to preside over this and really restore the pride and prosperity of our urban areas upstate because we saw what had happened and we're leaning hard into technology. Technology means a lot of different things, but focusing on the emerging technologies where other states have not gone as far as we're going.

So we said, why not here in Upstate New York? And today, you heard from Dave, was another major step forward for making that vision a reality. As I mentioned, the iron workers of Local 12 raised the final beam on this incredible EUV Center. And just talking to them, talking about how tough they are — it's really cold outside — showing up every day. It reminded me, and I told one of them that my uncle Tommy used to do this work in Buffalo in the cold, and I want more of those jobs created in the building of these facilities. We're seeing that all over now, but also what happens inside these buildings. So my friends, this is a very good day for Upstate New York.

And also, this will be home to North America's premier lab for semiconductor research right here in Albany. The most elite, smartest people are going to be congregating here, and I think that's just extraordinary. And I want to thank all the people who worked day in and day out to make this happen. And I also want to thank Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — Minority Leader now, sorry; used to be Majority Leader. Chuck Schumer was a tremendous partner in this as well. We stood on the stage many, many times with incredible announcements, and he has been steadfast in his support for this region, but also finding ways in Washington to unleash money and support for programs that allow us to do what we're doing here, especially in the semiconductor space.

We had a shared vision to make New York State the semiconductor capital of the world, and we're on our way there. So up and down the corridor we're doing much more. We think about what we accomplished — it was a great month when Joe Biden had signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law, and the State Legislature almost immediately followed suit with our own Green CHIPS and Science Act here in New York.

Because what President Biden did in unleashing all those billions of dollars to invest in this research, he made the United States more competitive. But how would that translate into New York State being more competitive? So we stepped up and we stepped up fast. I want to thank my entire team at Empire State Development, who visualized what this could be and how it could position us in a great place of power to have the money on the table, and the resources, and locations and the support to make this happen. So, we have been selected. And it's not just Micron down the road — which gets a lot of attention, a huge $100 billion there — but also investments in Edwards Vacuum, TTM, Menlo Micro, Global Foundries, investing billions and billions of dollars more because they see that this is the place for future growth.

So for all the industry leaders who are putting down their stakes here, they're the smart ones, but they also know we have something that is very special. We have a deep bench of talented, creative people. Very few places can brag about what we have here: the institutions, the synergy between New York CREATES and Albany and all of our other academic institutions around here.

So we've invested money to help people learn the skills as well — half a billion dollars invested in workforce development and training for these varied jobs. Because people can say, “Oh yeah, I want to work in that space, but where's the training coming from? Where do you go for that? How do we hold your hand and get you through this?” Because I want you to work here. I don't want you to think of any other states and people from neighborhoods that are underserved — they also need to know that this could be a place that you could build your life and your future. And we'll make sure you have that education. And that's one of the reasons for working with the Legislature.

Just a year ago we announced that we're going to offer free community college for adults 25 and up as they're thinking about either transferring into a different career or haven't figured it out until that age. They go into a field like advanced manufacturing, we're picking up the cost of everything — and that's books and everything, all your fees. And I'm so proud that we just launched this. It was passed this spring and into law in June.

This fall alone, there's been a huge spike in applications at all of our community colleges. That's what I wanted — to help support them, but also the people walking through those doors will know they're going to have skills that allow them to work in places like this. So that's how we make it happen: We invest in the places, the ideas, the people to come here, but also what we've done with the ON-RAMP training centers, the physical locations. We had to do this, taking underused properties and making them be — I have a whole new lease on life and so I'm really proud of what we've done there.

But there's also one more thing we needed to do. As you know, we're in a competitive world, not just here in the U.S., but seriously with China. This is a major threat to our national security, and that's why I think it's so important that these chips be domestically made and supported here, where we can trust the processes and trust that they're going to be in the right hands of people and not abused. So I want to make sure that it's not just designing microchips, but it's also refining them.

And what we have to do now to be competitive is make them smaller, and faster and more efficient — and that's what this is all about. Whoever does that will win the race for the future, and I want to win that race. I want to win that race right here. So that's why, once again, New York is being proactive. We invested a billion dollars into this cutting edge R and D hub. It's not a small amount of money with our Legislature. Again, thank you to my partners in the Legislature, but those investments pay off time and time again: investing in our people, our places, our institutions, but also our national security in our future — that's what that billion dollar investment was all about.

As part of that, we secured one of the most advanced tools on the planet. The High NA EUV Lithography Center machine — say that five times. It's a mouthful. But here's what you need to know: this is absolutely essential to producing the most sophisticated microchips, and that's why it has to happen here. Almost no one has this. When the machine arrives next year, it'll be the first and only publicly owned research hub of its kind in North America. I say that a lot. I like being the first, I like being number one. I like being the one and only, the biggest, the largest, the best. Because guess what? We are New York.

We are New York, and we are the best. And why not right here? And so the best researchers, as I said, are going to be coming here and partnering with the experts at New York CREATES, SUNY and world class companies. And so, this is how we're shaping the future of technology. It's happening before your eyes. You may not realize it, but it truly, truly is. The future, not just for our state and our country, but for the entire world. And the people of New York can join on this mission. And why are we doing this? Because they'll build the chips that help land our planes, keep our refrigerators cold and keep our stock markets humming.

So my vision is coming to realization that the same smaller cities and upstate towns that were left behind for decades — this is the future now. People are recognizing that this is the place to be. We are a center stage in this, and I could not be more proud to be working with dedicated individuals, people who so believe in this state, in this vision, and the unlimited possibilities that we possess here.

Could not be proud or more humble to be the Governor of the great State of New York. Thank you very much, everyone. Congratulations, again, to all of our union workers, all of our talented individuals, engineers, all the team that put this together. Congratulations. Thank you.