Strike up the band and have it play “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Loudly!
In what can only be rivaled in Rockdale’s business history by the 1951 “Alcoa’s coming” announcement, work is well underway at the former smelter site to accommodate a high-tech business which is estimated to bring 300 to 500 jobs to the area.
While a formal announcement has not yet been made, multiple unimpeachable sources have confirmed the project for The Reporter.
BITCOIN—It’s called “bitcoin mining.” What’s that? See separate story and don’t expect to understand all of it.
What’s important is that bitcoin miners understand it. And they do.
The company is Bitmain, headquartered in Beijing, China with offices in many world cities. It has leased a substantial amount of acreage encompassing the smelter footprint, apparently for about a decade with an option for an additional decade.
That’s only the smelter. The remaining part of the 32,000-acres-plus “Sandow Lakes Ranch,” the former Rockdale Operations, remains on sale.
The forward-looking, non-polluting new business will, of couse, have enormous positive economic impact on Rockdale and Milam County.
POWER POINTS—The former smelter is an attractive location for a bitcoin mining operation primarily because the infrastructure is in place to conduct massive amounts of electricity used by its servers.
Last month Coinmint, another bitcoin mining company, announced it is renovating the former Alcoa East facility in Massena, New York, as a facility for the high-tech mining procedure.
The site is also an hour away from two of the nation’s leading research universities, The University of Texas and Texas A&M University.
The large re-purposing project of former potlines at Alcoa is well underway. There’s no confirmed word on a completion date.
It has been known since April 6 that something on a huge, and positive, scale was coming to the area. Community leaders met at the Alcoa Lake Training Center to discuss government, business and school preparation for what looks to be a new era. There have been other meetings since, and hints have been dropped along the way that better times are in store.
‘BETTER TIMES’—Last week, in a report on what was essentially a gloomy budget outlook, County Judge Dave Barkemeyer said: “I believe we are on the verge of better times...The economic development efforts underway for some time now are beginning to pay off.”
Even though work began at the site, and is now well underway, The Reporter was advised no one can yet speak for the record.
See editorial, page 5A.
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