Over at the national tech website The Verge, Nilay Patel reminds that a year later, Foxconn has still done nothing with the ‘innovation’ centers that foreign corporation promised it would open around the state. They’re still empty:
The Foxconn “innovation center” in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on April 10th, 2020 Photo by Matt Jewell
See FOXCONN’S BUILDINGS IN WISCONSIN ARE STILL EMPTY, ONE YEAR LATER.
In Whitewater, the ‘Greater Whitewater’ Committee – the business league of a few local men (a landlord and a public relations man, mostly) – touted Foxconn at one of their meetings. See A Sham News Story on Foxconn.
One can make lemonade from Foxconn’s lemons. If the promoters of corporate welfare are looking for a new clubhouse for their organization, they need only contact Foxconn’s Taiwanese ownership.
There’s plenty of available space, suitable for immediate occupancy.
Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers, Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition is Automation, While Appeasing the Politically Ambitious, Foxconn’s Shabby Workplace Conditions, Foxconn’s Bait & Switch, Foxconn’s (Overwhelmingly) Low-Paying Jobs, The Next Guest Speaker, Trump, Ryan, and Walker Want to Seize Wisconsin Homes to Build Foxconn Plant, Foxconn Deal Melts Away, “Later This Year,” Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison, Foxconn’s Predatory Reliance on Eminent Domain, Foxconn: Failure & Fraud, Foxconn Roundup: Desperately Ill Edition, Foxconn Roundup: Indiana Layoffs & Automation Everywhere, Foxconn Roundup: Outside Work and Local Land, Foxconn Couldn’t Even Meet Its Low First-Year Goal, Foxconn Talks of Folding Wisconsin Manufacturing Plans, WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid, Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy, Laughable Spin as Industrial Policy, Foxconn: The ‘State Visit Project,’ ‘Inside Wisconsin’s Disastrous $4.5 Billion Deal With Foxconn,’ Foxconn: When the Going Gets Tough…, The Amazon-New York Deal, Like the Foxconn Deal, Was Bad Policy, Foxconn Roundup, Foxconn: The Roads to Nowhere, Foxconn: Evidence of Bad Policy Judgment, Foxconn: Behind Those Headlines, Foxconn: On Shaky Ground, Literally, Foxconn: Heckuva Supply Chain They Have There…, Foxconn: Still Empty, and the Chairman of the Board Needs a Nap, Foxconn: Cleanup on Aisle 4, Foxconn: The Closer One Gets, The Worse It Is, Foxconn Confirm Gov. Evers’s Claim of a Renegotiation Discussion, America’s Best Know Better, Despite Denials, Foxconn’s Empty Buildings Are Still Empty, Right on Schedule – A Foxconn Delay, Foxconn: Reality as a (Predictable) Disappointment, Town Residents Claim Trump’s Foxconn Factory Deal Failed Them, Foxconn: Independent Study Confirms Project is Beyond Repair, It Shouldn’t, Foxconn: Wrecking Ordinary Lives for Nothing, Hey, Wisconsin, How About an Airport-Coffee Robot?, Be Patient, UW-Madison: Only $99,300,000.00 to Go!, Foxconn: First In, Now Out, Foxconn on the Same Day: Yes…um, just kidding, we mean no, Foxconn: ‘Innovation Centers’ Gone in a Puff of Smoke, Foxconn: Worse Than Nothing, Foxconn: State of Wisconsin Demands Accountability, Foreign Corporation Stalls, Foxconn Notices the Noticeable, and Journal Sentinel’s Rick Romell Reports the Obvious about Foxconn Project.
The obvious use for the “Innovation Centers” is as COVID-19 wards. They are empty, and Foxconn doesn’t have any other use for them. The only reason the innovation centers even exist is because Walker needed some propping up in the hustings. That didn’t work, and so they are now surplus.
From an engineering standpoint, the whole concept of distributed innovation centers didn’t make a lot of sense, anyway. They would have causes an unnecessary waste of travel time back and forth to the mothership in Pleasant Prairie and really would not have been doing much innovation in any case. What innovation they would have done is related to manufacturing and pretty-much requires hands-on activity at the manufacturing facility at PP. Any product design innovation would be teleported in from Taiwan, not done domestically.
The spread-the-wealth-around tactic for getting political buy-in is nothing new. Lockheed, with their bottomless economic sinkhole called the F-35 fighter, showed Foxconn the way. That program would not even exist if they had not sugared every US state and foreign prospective customer with manufacturing contracts.
i like the virus ward idea. these trickle down boys were having sooo much fun until reality showed up with a camera.