Bagging the Big One

3 Oct 2017


How Wisconsin Landed Foxconn

Remember the big one that got away? Wisconsin doesn’t.

Landing the largest capital investment in state history has a way of erasing bad memories. In Wisconsin’s case, winning a $10-billion investment in a 20-million-sq.-ft. (1.8-million-sq.-m.) advanced electronics manufacturing complex from Taiwan-based Foxconn not only eclipses any other economic development deal in the Badger State’s past; it offers the potential to rewrite the state’s future.

“The eagle has landed, it has spread its wings, and it is taking off again,” Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker said at the ceremony announcing the game-changing Foxconn investment at the famed Milwaukee Art Museum on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Designed by legendary architects Eero Saarinen, David Kahler and Santiago Calatrava, the Art Museum served as the perfect backdrop for the project announcement. The 8K liquid crystal display TV screens that will be assembled at the new Foxconn factories in Southeast Wisconsin will represent the latest technology in high-end electronics, and they will require the advanced skills of technically trained workers — 13,000 of them — when it opens in 2020.

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