Wichita and Coffey County are competing for Kansas megaproject incentives, sources say

Wichita appears to be competing with Coffey County for a massive state subsidy package aimed at helping Kansas land billion-dollar “megaprojects” — the same incentives program used in July to lure Panasonic to the Kansas City area.

It’s a competition because APEX incentives can go to only one more project before the program expires at the end of 2023. To qualify, companies must agree to spend $1 billion or more to expand operations or relocate their headquarters anywhere in Kansas.

Wichita’s proposal would fund an expansion of Integra Technologies, according to multiple sources with knowledge of discussions about the project who are not authorized to speak publicly about it.

Integra is a Wichita-based private company with 250 employees that contracts with aerospace and defense customers for work on semiconductors. The company would not confirm or deny its interest in APEX funding.

Coffey County’s proposal, nicknamed “Silicon Prairie,” would fund a multibillion dollar cluster of microprocessor industries in eastern Kansas, about halfway between Wichita and Kansas City along I-35, Coffey County Economic Development Director Bobby Skipper told The Eagle.

It’s unclear how far along the proposals are in the submission process, and details about job estimates probably won’t be available until after a project is chosen. The Kansas Department of Commerce would not confirm whether it has been involved in discussions on either proposal.

There’s no guarantee either proposal would be approved for APEX funding.

The secretive incentives program — Attracting Powerful Economic Expansion, or APEX for short — was ushered through the Statehouse earlier this year by Gov. Laura Kelly and Lt. Gov. David Toland to lure a $4 billion Panasonic battery plant to the Kansas City area. The Kansas Department of Commerce negotiated the deal in private and a panel of lawmakers and Kelly voted in secret to award $829 million in state incentives without any wage or hiring requirements. Panasonic projections say the plant will create 4,000 permanent jobs.

Both the Wichita and Coffey County projects are also competing for a cut of federal funding under the $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act signed into law in August by President Joe Biden in an effort to ramp up domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States. The U.S. Commerce Department plans to begin reviewing funding requests in February.

Integra President and CEO Brett Robinson said securing CHIPS funding “is the primary focus at the moment.”

“I am happy to discuss future expansion plans when we get a little further down the road with that current focus area (CHIPS Act),” Robinson said.

In the past year, the company has given Kelly, Wichita Mayor Brandon Whipple and U.S. Senator Jerry Moran tours of Integra’s Wichita headquarters.

The only public discussion of Wichita’s involvement in the competition has come out of Coffey County, where local leaders say publicity of their underdog project could help give them an upper hand in a political fight between rural and urban lawmakers.

“We are going to beat them because we have a better project,” Skipper said at a recent Coffey County commission meeting. “But we need people to know that.”

Skipper told the commission that Coffey County and surrounding counties should band together to lobby for their project if it hopes to edge out Wichita.

“It’s no surprise that blue suits with big money who lobby the state constantly, like the project out of Wichita, they get a lot of consideration that rural America just normally does not get,” Skipper said. “And we are rural America, but we have a significant project in our backyard that we’re pushing.”

Private investment could be as high as $3.5 billion, he said.

“Downstream from that, we haven’t put a number on it,” Skipper said in an interview. “But you’re talking about all the little mom and pop suppliers, all the new hires for trucking companies, destinations and restaurants, new students in schools, housing — all the downstream trickle-down. It’s kind of mind-blowing.”

Skipper told the Coffey County Commission that Wichita’s project would create “roughly 100 jobs” while the Coffey County project would bring in “about ten times that number.” Neither of those estimates could be independently verified.

Greater Wichita Partnership, the local economic development organization, would not say whether that is accurate.

“While we are fully supportive of APEX and the benefits which tools like this provide, we don’t have any additional information on projects to share at this time,” said Cynthia Wentworth, vice president of strategic communications for Greater Wichita Partnership, in a statement.