By Owen Pfeiffer
CHEEKTOWAGA — A transformer factory on Dale Road that has spent decades in and out of New York’s environmental cleanup programs is now at the center of one of the region’s larger manufacturing bets of the year, and taxpayers are a sizable partner in it.
Niagara Power Transformer broke ground this week on a $71.2 million expansion it calls the Niagara Power 50 Initiative, a two-year, six-phase build-out designed to lift output from about 90 custom power transformers a year to about 140. The project adds 96,000 square feet of new and renovated space next to the company’s 121,500-square-foot campus and promises 73 new full-time jobs on top of the 146 people already on the payroll.
Governor Kathy Hochul’s office announced the groundbreaking with a long list of public partners. Added together from the state’s announcement and Erie County Industrial Development Agency records, the public package comes to roughly $11.6 million: $4.5 million from the New York Power Authority, up to $3.4 million in Excelsior Jobs tax credits from Empire State Development, about $1.5 million in brownfield tax credits the site is eligible for, and nearly $2.2 million in sales and property tax breaks from the ECIDA.
That works out to about $159,000 in public support for each new job promised, or about 16 cents of every dollar of the project’s cost.
The documents behind the deal show a company with a strong case: a product the country can’t get enough of, union jobs and a cleanup of a fire-gutted lot neighbors have lived with for years. They also show a company owned by a Houston-based Fortune 200 contractor telling the county that, without the help, the investment could go to one of its plants in another state.
A grid bottleneck, built in Cheektowaga
Power transformers step electricity up and down as it moves across the grid. Utilities have struggled to buy them for several years because there are few domestic makers, lead times are long and demand is climbing with new power plants, electrification and data centers.
“As New York advances its clean energy economy, strengthening our grid and expanding domestic transformer production are essential to meeting the state’s growing energy needs,” Hochul said in the announcement. “Niagara Power Transformer’s expansion helps ease a critical supply‑chain bottleneck, delivers good-paying jobs to Western New York and supports the industry that keeps the lights on for New Yorkers while ensuring we have enough power to help keep energy costs down.”
Company President Chris Kraft called it “the largest investment in our company’s history.”
“As electricity demand continues to grow, driven by the resurgence of American manufacturing and electrification, the need for reliable power infrastructure has never been greater,” Kraft said. “This investment will help our customers modernize and expand the grid to meet that demand.”
According to the company’s application to the ECIDA, Niagara builds custom liquid-filled substation transformers for investor-owned and municipal utilities, cooperatives, renewable developers and industrial buyers. It lists National Grid, American Electric Power and FirstEnergy as representative customers. Only 27% of its sales stay in Erie County and another 11% elsewhere in New York; 62% go to customers in other states.
At an Aug. 25 public hearing at Cheektowaga Town Hall, the only person who spoke was Stan Hatch of Niagara Power Transformer, according to the ECIDA’s hearing record.
“As you may know, the demand for power transformers has increased dramatically over the last several years,” Hatch said. “Our customer base is asking us to do everything we can to increase our productivity and production so that we can help to meet this growing demand for power transformers.”
What the money buys
The ECIDA application breaks the $71.2 million budget down in detail. About $5.4 million goes to buying land and buildings, $18.8 million to 55,000 square feet of new construction and $14 million to renovating 41,000 square feet. Manufacturing equipment accounts for $16.4 million, soft costs such as engineering and legal work $13.4 million, and environmental remediation and demolition about $2.7 million.
The company said the price tag has climbed from about $52 million when the project was first developed to nearly $70 million, blaming construction costs, utility upgrades, specialized equipment and inflation. Quanta Services, Niagara’s owner, is putting up about $62.9 million in equity, according to the filing, with no bank financing.
The ECIDA board approved $1,726,913 in sales tax exemptions and $467,351 in property tax abatements over a 10-year term at its Sept. 23 meeting, according to the agency’s inducement resolution. A cost-benefit analysis prepared for the agency by MRB Group projected $331.6 million in regional benefits over the life of the deal, a ratio the agency put at 140 to 1 overall and 210 to 1 for Erie County.
The property taxes the company pays now on the two main parcels total about $111,000 a year, the application shows. The resolution projects that the new assessed value will eventually bring in about $170,000 a year in new taxes once the abatement runs out.
The Buffalo News reported that Erie County Executive Mark C. Poloncarz, who sits on the ECIDA board and is often critical of tax breaks, backed this one. “This is an example of the projects that we should be incentivizing, in an industry that is growing,” Poloncarz said, according to The News.
The jobs, and what they pay
The application lists 219 full-time positions once the project is done, along with an average salary of $79,532 for both the jobs being kept and the new ones. The breakdown by category is more telling. The 147 production workers average $64,635 in salary plus about $19,390 in benefits. Professional staff average $110,198, and 17 managers average $156,075.
Most of the new hires will be union. Greg Inglut, business manager of IBEW Local 41, said the expansion means “57 new IBEW jobs on top of the 90 Local 41 members who already build transformers here.”
“These are good-paying union manufacturing careers, with a path in for people just starting out,” Inglut said. “Our members take real pride in building the equipment that keeps the grid running.”
Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan, whose city doesn’t host the plant but whose residents could fill the jobs, made the same point about entry-level hiring. “By creating dozens of new union jobs, including opportunities for workers with no experience, this project will open doors for workers across our region to build careers, support their families, and get ahead,” Ryan said.
The application says the plant is a short walk from the Thruway Plaza transit hub, served by the 4, 6 and 22 bus routes, and that all 73 new jobs are expected to go to residents of the six-county labor market.
The ECIDA’s deal has clawback terms. Under the resolution, the company must invest at least 85% of the promised amount, or about $60.5 million, keep its 146 existing jobs and add at least 85% of the new ones, which works out to 208 full-time jobs. Fall short and the agency can recapture benefits.
‘Staying here’ and the out-of-state option
At the August hearing, Hatch closed with a pledge. “We appreciate, again, the consideration of our application and want to reiterate our commitment to staying here in Cheektowaga,” he said.
The written application lays out the other side of the bargain. In its answer to the ECIDA’s required “but for” question, which asks whether the project would happen without public help, the company checked “yes” to the likelihood that it would not be undertaken without the agency’s assistance.
“As part of Quanta Services, Niagara Power Transformer competes with affiliated manufacturing operations in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee for internal capital investment,” the application says. “Without this support, the Project could be delayed, reduced in scope, or relocated.”
That is a common pitch in IDA applications, and it is the reason watchdogs press agencies to test such claims. The leverage is real. Quanta disclosed the purchase in its third-quarter 2024 results, describing a Buffalo company “with a 100-year operating history” that makes liquid-filled power transformers. In the same report, it put its total backlog at $34 billion. It has several places to put new capacity.
The application also shows the company asked for, and expects, more public money than the ECIDA alone provides. It lists $8.25 million in “public sources” among the funds for the project, naming Empire State Development, NYSERDA, NYSEG and the Brownfield Cleanup Program. The state’s announcement credits NYPA, ESD and the brownfield credits.
Justin E. Driscoll, president and CEO of the New York Power Authority, said the $4.5 million from NYPA’s Western New York Power Proceeds program, which is funded by sales of unused hydropower from the Niagara Power Project, “represents a significant investment in Western New York that will strengthen the domestic supply chain of critical grid infrastructure, support high-quality jobs, and help deliver the reliable, affordable and clean energy that New Yorkers depend on.”
An eyesore, a fire and a long cleanup history
Part of the expansion lands on a lot Cheektowaga officials have wanted fixed for years.
“I’m excited to see this project in Cheektowaga, adding more than 70 new jobs and making use of property that has been an eyesore for years now,” Town Supervisor Brian Nowak said.
That property is 1746 Dale Road, across the street from the plant. A draft remedial action work plan filed with the state Department of Environmental Conservation says a fire on July 15, 2021, caused much of the building there to collapse, “with no apparent cleanup operations conducted until June 2023.” Its history runs back to 1924 and includes an air reduction plant and decades of precision metal fabrication. Niagara bought the parcel in May 2026 and the neighboring 24 Anderson Road, a former electrical supply warehouse, in February.
Investigators found chlorinated solvents, including the industrial degreaser TCE, in soil, soil vapor and groundwater, along with 1,4-dioxane, according to the work plan. Niagara plans to build a new welding shop and warehouse on the combined 2.16-acre site. The plan calls for demolishing what’s left of the burned building, digging out roughly 3,400 cubic yards of soil under the new welding building, treating groundwater in place and installing a vapor barrier and venting system under the new building. The state Health Department and DEC have determined the site doesn’t pose a significant threat to public health and the environment, the plan says.
DEC put the company’s application to enter the Brownfield Cleanup Program, as site C915300, out for public comment in the Sept. 9 Environmental Notice Bulletin. The comment period closes Saturday, Oct. 24. Comments go to DEC project manager Veronica Kreutzer at the department’s Buffalo office, 700 Delaware Ave., or by phone at (716) 851-7220.
“Under Governor Hochul, DEC’s successful Brownfield Cleanup Program continues to address environmental pollution, help protect public health and support economic development, especially in underserved communities most impacted by legacy industrial pollution,” DEC Commissioner Amanda Lefton said.
The plant’s own land has been through the state’s cleanup programs before. The original transformer factory property is a remediated State Superfund site, No. 915146, and the vacant lot at 1755 Dale Road went through the Brownfield Cleanup Program as the “Niagara Transformer Corporation Site” more than 15 years ago. A 2010 DEC decision document says PCBs were found there at concentrations as high as 1,180 parts per million in an area state contractors used while remediating the neighboring factory site. The company dug out contaminated soil in 2010 to make way for an earlier expansion.
That 2011 expansion also had ECIDA help, according to the new inducement resolution, which notes a prior $8 million project for a 24,000-square-foot facility.
The ECIDA filing says two large earthen berms on the 1755 Dale Road parcel that held the last known PCB contamination were removed in May and June 2026 and hauled to a permitted landfill in Niagara Falls. The company also disclosed 10 minor spills reported to DEC since 1990, all of them closed.
What the public should watch
The expansion is scheduled to run through June 2028, with occupancy of new space starting in August 2027, according to the application. Elected officials lined up behind it.
“For more than a century, this company has helped power our communities and has built a reputation for manufacturing excellence right here in Cheektowaga,” said Rep. Tim Kennedy. State Sen. April N.M. Baskin said she was “proud that this important work will continue right here in Cheektowaga, supporting local workers and strengthening our regional economy.”
Empire State Development’s Excelsior credits are performance-based, meaning the company has to hit hiring targets to claim them,. Whether the 73 jobs show up, and stay, will be visible in the ECIDA’s annual compliance reporting and ESD’s Excelsior reports.
For a region that has spent decades watching manufacturing leave, a factory adding union jobs to build grid equipment the country is short on is good news. The paperwork is a reminder that the region is paying for some of it, and that the promises in it are the public’s to collect on.
The Buffalo Chronicle has asked Niagara Power Transformer, Quanta Services and the ECIDA for comment and will update this story with any response.
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