EDIE ZUVANICH Special to the Press
07/27/2024 06:00 AM
New development targets Samsung suppliers
A planned compound being developed by a major industrial supplier from Korea will provide space for other suppliers looking to locate in the burgeoning Taylor industrial hub.
ImarketAmerica, the United States subsidiary of iMarket-Korea, presented the Taylor City Council with designs for a 211-acre development on U.S. 79 near the Samsung Austin Semiconductor plant on Thursday.
“We have a lot of land speculators who have bought land around Taylor, developers and so forth that have plans to do projects just like this to bring some of the suppliers for Samsung to Taylor,” said Mayor Pro Tem Kelly Cmerek. “But I was so excited to hear about iMarket, as one of the suppliers for Samsung, to facilitate the project and bring other suppliers and give them a conduit to come and locate in Taylor. That’s the reason we did Samsung, so we could get all the suppliers and make it a cohesive growth driver for our community.” iMarket’s website says their branches in Korea, China and Vietnam provide purchasing support for overseas offices of Korean companies including Samsung Electronics, and they are expanding their business to work with other multinational and local companies.
The company moved its U.S. headquarters to Round Rock earlier this year, and a press release from that city says iMarketKorea is Korea’s largest maintenance, repair and operations company, with a focus on business-to-business and industrial materials distribution and provides services to leading corporations globally.
Ethan Harwell of Kimley-Horn and Associates presented the layout for iMarketAmerica to the Council.
As designed, the complex offers 2.23 million square feet dedicated to warehousing, factories and research and development operations, with another 66,030 square feet for retail, restaurants and supporting facilities such as utility plants.
“We think of this really as an addition to the city of Taylor, not just as a development,” Harwell said.
He added that the project was unique in that it was not just an industrial complex, but also offered shaded sidewalks for pedestrians, an open space in the flood plain area where employees could take breaks and potentially services such as retail, banks and restaurants so that employees would have amenities conveniently close by.
“This is a very exciting project for the city,” said Assistant City Manager Tom Yantis.
“It’s really nice to be able to see the areas that we anticipated to be for employment land uses, industrial land uses, actually coming to fruition and have developers come and bring those sites onto the market for the ability to land some of these big employers we’re looking to land.”
City Council is being asked to approve some variances from the city’s land use code, which Yantis said was due to the challenging nature of the piece of property.
It is bounded by U.S.
79, Farm to Market 619, FM 112 and a railroad, in addition to having a flood plain running through it.
“They did a great job of really respecting the intent of the city’s transportation plan by carrying a major circulation route through the site and connecting [the major roadways] with these internal roadways,” Yantis said.
The development will feature dedicated lanes for trucks that separate them from car traffic within the complex for added safety.
Ben White, president and CEO of the Taylor Economic Development Corporation, told council this was a much-needed project for the community.
“We have prospects that want to come to Taylor but we don’t have places to put them.
People don’t want to wait 24 months for a building to be built.
They want to be moved in within the next six to nine months,” he said.
“As Samsung gets up and running, those suppliers are going to start coming in. So, we need this development to get going.”
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