Micron May Add To Boise Work Force Planning Documents Show Addition Of Fabrication Plants

Amid debate over whether the state should have done more to lure Micron Technology Inc.’s $1.3 billion expansion, the computer chip maker is indicating it still plans to add up to 3,500 jobs in the Boise area over the next seven years.

Boise-based Micron originally had hoped to select an expansion site by the end of February. The company missed that deadline, but will announce where it will locate the new facility either Friday or Monday, said Julie Nash, Micron spokeswoman. Oklahoma City; Omaha, Neb.; and Utah County, Utah, are the finalists.

In the meantime, the computer chip giant has supplied Boise and Ada County officials with a map outlining its view of the future in the area.

Corporate officials are not discussing how many people would be hired or even when further Boise expansion might occur. But the map shows two new manufacturing plants adjacent to the existing facility and roads being moved to make even more room.

Micron executives call the map a planning document to aid the highway district and city.

“We had to show the potential for growth in the future for their planning purposes,” Nash said.

The company has advised city planners that the designated plants would be 144,000 square feet and 128,000 square feet in size, and two more could be built as well.

Highway officials and industry analysts believe the document indicates as many as 3,500 new workers by 2002 and up to another 3,000 on top of that later. That would bring Micron employment in Boise to as many as 13,700.

“I would not be at all surprised that Micron has said to the state that they have some intent of eventually building a (factory) there whenever their economics permit it,” analyst Jim Handy of Dataquest Inc. in San Jose, Calif., said.

City Planning Director Wayne Gibbs said the two fabrication plants are probably years away.