Taylor leaders are celebrating another major South Korean company soon to be setting up shop within city limits.
At the May 11 meeting of the Taylor City Council, City Manager Brian LaBorde presented a recent trip to South Korea he participated in alongside other city and county officials, during which the city forged new relationships, including a partnership with iMarketKorea, a distributor specializing in industrial materials.
“It will be a more than 200-acre technology park, which will be phenomenal,” said Mayor Brandt Rydell, who also served in the delegation, which also included Economic Development Corporation CEO Mark Thomas, Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell, Precinct 4 Commissioner Russ Boles, and others. “This is what we have been waiting and hoping for. This is the first of many such developments going forward.”
The purpose of the trip, which took place April 15-22, was to forge new relationships and gain a better understand of the future impacts of the Samsung Austin Semiconductor fab, officials said.
“We are very excited by the economic prosperity that is to come here,” LaBorde said.
While overseas, the group had the opportunity to visit city officials in Pyeongtaek City, as well as executives at the Samsung facility near Pyeongtaek, which is a similar size to what the fab site in Taylor will grow to, Rydell said.
“Taylor will surpass what Pyeongtaek is,” Rydell said. “It will be larger and more advanced. When you see that factory over there, keep in mind, they are stacking their fabs over there because land is such a precious commodity. So, we won’t be that tall ... And the day we were there, there were 85,000 workers on-site, 20,000 working in the fab and 65,000 construction workers because they are even now building onto their fab.”
While in Korea, in addition to a Memorandum of Understanding the city signed with iMarketKorea, which has already purchased land in the city, Rydell signed a Memorandum of Intent with Bando Construction, a Korean company that specializes in residential and commercial developments near other Samsung facilities worldwide.
“They have an interest in Taylor,” Rydell said. “They don’t have any immediate plans, and I don’t think they have any land under contract at this point. It’s more just investigating ... so they invited us to come tour some of their mixed-use developments, their golf course and the things that they may have in mind for Taylor.”
At the meeting, At-large Councilman Dwayne Ariola expressed his appreciation to Thomas and Taylor EDC for funding the city’s portion of trip and landing the iMarket deal under the radar.
“This is the second mic drop for Mark Thomas for landing a huge industry that is going to help all the city of Taylor,” Ariola said. “And people were questioning ‘Who paid for the trip?’ You can open records request Mark Thomas and the EDC. He is not the typical EDC who wines and dines .... He is very conservative with his budget...And landing that big infrastructure is going to bring more tax revenue for us, and that is going to let us continue to lower our tax rates and lower utility rates for all. It’s a win-win. Yes, we had to spend a little money, but you have to spend money to make money.”
