Auburn, NY – 20 Families Moving to the Community to Oversee Certification of Kosher Cheese [video]

Auburn, NY – It’s expected to bring more than 70 new jobs to Cayuga County. Today, the Saratoga Cheese Corporation unveiled their plans for a $40 million, 64,000-square-foot facility in Auburn. With so many dairy farms and so many cows in Cayuga County, the folks at the Saratoga Cheese Corporation say it just made sense to put a cheese plant outside of Auburn.

“This project has been — to the best of my knowledge — in the works for two years,” says Auburn mayor Mike Quill. The mayor says it’s work that’s finally paying off, bringing 77 direct new jobs and 180 indirect jobs to the area, and generate $3.6 million in dairy producer revenues per year — a sign of hope in a struggling economy.

The mayor says the plant would go in a parcel of land just outside the city limits. There would be more than 100 constructions jobs and 20 new families would move to the area; they would build homes there and bring in revenue for the city of Auburn.

Those families would be related to rabbis — their main job at the plant would be to certify the cheese made keeps Kosher traditions.

New families also would bring in more business through shopping and living in the city. “With the economic difficulties the country is in, we’re blessed — the city, the county — everyone included,” says Quill.

The company says they’re confident they’ll have the funding. “We’re not a derivative, or some financial business — the demand for our product is growing,” says Larry Rosenbaum, chairman of Saratoga Cheese Corp.
The company hopes to break ground this June and open their doors in 2010.

With the exception of the rabbis, the Saratoga Cheese Corporation says it will be able to fill the new jobs with people from the area.

At the factory, specialty cheeses will be made such as feta, fresh mozzarella, muenster, havarti and other varieties using kosher Cholov Yisroel milk from local farmers.

State Sen. Michael Nozzolio announced he has secured a $400,000 state grant that will go toward site design and development. And the city of Auburn and Cayuga County are finalizing an agreement that should extend state development benefits to the business park.

But an area state Senate candidate wasn’t quite as optimistic when hearing the news. Paloma Capanna, a Democrat challenging Nozzolio for the 54th Senate District seat, said today that it is unlikely a coincidence that this announcement was made so close to Election Day.

“I can’t help but question whether this announcement is premature or designed because the election is in the next two weeks,” Capanna said.
She said she hopes the taxpayer money going into this project will result in the predicted amount of jobs, she said she is “a little bit nervous” about the idea of giving $400,000 and promising tax breaks to a new corporation with no track record.

“We need to think more about public money with a watchdog attitude,” Capanna said. “There are questions I think we should be discussing as citizens and taxpayers.”