Now's Your Chance to Buy SK Hynix's Old Chip Fab in Oregon: Auction Opens at $1.5 Million

(Image credit: Ten-X.com)

If you've ever wanted to buy a chip factory, now's your chance! The chip fab that used to belong to SK Hynix up until 2015 but shut down in 2008 is up for auction with a starting bid of $1.5 million, as reported by Oregon Live Tuesday. 

The fab is at 1830 Willow Creek Circle in Eugene, Oregon and has a floor space of 1.2 million square feet. it has a huge amount of excess land available for further expansion and comes with one clean room, which could be helpful, for example, for the pharmaceutical industry, of 122,000 square feet.

(Image credit: Ten-X.com)

The property also has a lot of power access with two 42MW substations for 84MW of power, has access to high-speed internet, as well as a water discharge capacity of 1.2 million gallons per day. The property even comes with some of the old infrastructure for 200mm wafer manufacturing, according to the listing.

Eugene Technology Center's History

(Image credit: Ten-X.com)

SK Hynix initially opened the factory in 1998 with a $1.5 billion investment. A decade later, SK Hynix closed the factory with roughly 1,400 losing jobs, according to the Oregon publication 

After this, the fab remained unused for years until 2015, when Avago, now known as Broadcom, bought the fab for $21 million. However, Avago changed its tune about re-opening the fab the next year.

Following that, Corning (the company that makes the Gorilla Glass in your phone), bought the factory for $13.4 million but did not end up using it for anything. 

Fast forward three years to today, and the factory is once again for sale, this time with the auction opening at just $1.5 million. If you want in, you'll have to pay a $25,000 participation deposit to cast your bid from March 23 through March 25, 2020.

Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

  • AnimeMania
    That place would probably be a bargain, it looks like it would be a great location to film high tech or futuristic movies at.

    Here is a website with lots of pictures the place is gorgeous.
    https://www.ten-x.com/commercial/details/1830-willow-creek-circle-eugene-or-97402-193038567-b_216/
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    Wonder who is going to buy a fab that has been abandoned for a decade. At that starting bid, looks like Corning simply wants to recover the land value.
    Reply
  • TechLurker
    AnimeMania said:
    Here is a website with lots of pictures the place is gorgeous.
    https://www.ten-x.com/commercial/details/1830-willow-creek-circle-eugene-or-97402-193038567-b_216/

    Honestly, the place looks ideal to convert into one of those "getaway from everything" mini resort/spas. Or even turning the place into a spacious home (like those abandoned/retired production/power plant-turned-private-residence). Sell off the unneeded equipment and convert the facility into something more useful. Especially since it doesn't seem to be of any use to any production company for some reason.

    The mini-resort/spa would bring back some jobs, whereas the residence would only require seasonal jobs (mostly to maintain the grounds). So it's not entirely a selfish path.
    Reply
  • Co BIY
    Great TV show idea - Industrial Fix it or Flip it. Rehab or rehash.

    Several retired fabs in my hometown. Usually they get put to use but the expense of a fab is in the cutting edge equipment and skilled labor required to bring it up to speed as an integrated system. The buildings themselves are pretty standard industrial shells.

    High tech marches on. The cutting edge was once the floppy disc and we have a building here (two actually) built in the shape of the floppy discs. It now holds a library.
    Reply