The former Hynix colossus in west Eugene — Lane County’s biggest factory — remains largely empty and idle, more than five years after an Ohio company bought the place and said it would quickly turn it into a tech manufacturing hub with hundreds of jobs.
The owner, privately held Stratacache, has been trying for years to secure hundreds of millions of dollars to install production lines at the plant to make cutting-edge micro-LED chips and assemble them into retail-grade digital display screens. So far, it has been unsuccessful.
At every turn, though, Stratacache has vowed that great things lie just ahead for the 1.2 million-square-foot facility.
A tech news website, Sixteen:Nine, which often publishes boosterish articles about Stratacache, earlier this month claimed Stratacache now plans to start micro-LED chip manufacturing at the plant in 18 to 24 months.
Yet there’s no sign that any production equipment has been installed there. The vast parking lots are deserted but for a handful of cars.
And the federal government, a vital potential source of money for the proposed major production lines at the factory, is silent about whether it will help.
Stratacache in June 2024 applied for grants or loans from the Biden administration’s CHIPS for America program to help pay for the proposed $750 million main production lines, Stratacache records reviewed by Eugene Weekly show. But the Commerce Department, which runs the program, told Stratacache to expect delays because there were so many applicants, the records show. The federal agency has not yet publicly decided on Stratacache’s application. Now, the Trump administration is seeking to pare down CHIPS spending and is reducing some CHIPS grants made under Biden, according to news accounts.
“At this time, we have no update on the status of the (Stratacache) grant application or its viability under the Trump administration,” U.S. Rep. Val Hoyle, D-Eugene, tells Eugene Weekly.
Stratacache has had better luck with Oregon officials. In July 2024, the company signed an agreement to accept $19 million from the Oregon Business Development Department to help build an initial “pilot” micro-LED chip production line at the factory that would cost about $200 million. The company has drawn some of that grant to buy a very small portion of that equipment, state records show. But it’s unclear if that equipment has been delivered. A document the company gave the state last summer indicated it might not be delivered for 12 months.
No reply
Stratacache CEO Chris Riegel and the company’s communications staff did not respond to EW phone messages and emails.
Public records and news reports suggest only a couple of dozen people work at the plant.
The place is a picture of tranquility. On several recent weekdays, there were just four or five cars in the parking lots. The only outdoor activity was a tractor mowing weeds on Stratacache’s fields.
Stratacache would very likely need electrical and other permits from the city of Eugene to install sophisticated production lines. But since buying the plant in 2020, Stratacache has taken out only three permits: two in 2022 to repair the roof and to fix supports for existing chilled water and condensate lines, and one earlier this month to replace fire alarms in most of the complex, city records show.
Korean tech giant Hynix opened the place in 1998 after spending $1.5 billion building it and installing computer chip fabrication machinery. Ten years later, Hynix shut it. The empty factory passed through several owners until Stratacache bought the 200-acre spread for $6.3 million in March 2020.
Crumbling facade
As a private company, Stratacache discloses little about its financials, facilities or staffing. It provides hardware, software and support for digital LED — light emitting diode — screens such as retail displays and billboards. It has about 1,000 employees at its downtown Dayton, Ohio, headquarters and other U.S. and foreign locations, news reports suggest. It has one factory/warehouse in Ohio, news reports say. It’s unclear whether it has other factories.
Stratacache’s company-owned Dayton HQ made the news earlier this year when it was hit and extensively damaged by the crumbling facade of a vacant adjacent office building in a windstorm. In interviews with Dayton media, Riegel complained of the many abandoned, dangerous buildings downtown, plus drug use and prostitution. But he buys real estate there, partly because it is cheap, according to news reports. Stratacache entities in recent years have bought at least two other office buildings in downtown Dayton.
With the Eugene purchase, Stratacache told officials it had big plans.
Jobs, jobs, jobs
In 2020, Anne Fifield, the city of Eugene’s economic development manager, told the local KMTR TV station: “We know that they plan to bring about 100 new jobs to the region in 2021,” adding, “After that, they expect to bring in hundreds of more jobs over 2022 and 2023.”
“This is a really good fit,” Fifield told The Register-Guard at that time. “They’re going to be good jobs.”
But none of that happened.
Fifield didn’t respond to EW’s questions this month about what the city knows of the staffing and equipment at the plant, except to write in an email: “I know that their plan and schedule have evolved, but I don’t have the most recent information.”
Riegel, in interviews this year with Sixteen:Nine said the Eugene plant will make cutting-edge LED screens. Stratacache is “developing next-gen displays the world has never seen before,” Riegel was quoted as saying. “These displays will bring capabilities never seen or even contemplated before that will change the fundamental understanding of how displays work and can be used.”
The Eugene-made screens will displace commercial LED displays made in Asia, says Oregon’s grant contract with the company.
Tax fight
But with the Eugene purchase, Stratacache stepped into financial quagmires. The roof replacement reportedly cost $3 million. And the company has spent years trying to cut its property tax bill and secure the $19 million grant from the state.
Lane County set the factory’s market value in 2021 at $29 million, with an annual tax bill of over $500,000, county records show. Stratacache argued the facility was worth $11 million with an annual tax bill of only a couple of hundred thousand dollars. The sides eventually settled, in February 2024, on a $16 million value, and an annual tax bill of about $300,000.
But until the settlement, the state refused to release any of the $19 million it had tentatively awarded in 2023, according to reports published in The Oregonian. An Oregonian article in 2024 pegged the factory workforce at about 30.
Money sources
Stratacache’s state grant application documents provide some details about how the new production lines would be funded.
The pilot micro-LED chip line would be “phase one” and cost about $200 million. Of that, Stratacache would provide $108 million, and $19 million would come from the state. The documents don’t explain where the remaining $73 million would come from. To date, the company has drawn down $4.75 million of the $19 million grant.
“Phase two” would total $750 million. It relies on securing an unspecified amount of grants, loans or loan guarantees from the CHIPS for America program, according to the documents.
The Commerce Department didn’t respond to a Eugene Weekly request for comment.
“The project is expected to create an estimated 400 permanent, high-paying jobs,” says the company’s agreement with the state.
Bricks $ Mortar is a column anchored by Christian Wihtol, who worked as an editor and writer at The Register-Guard in Eugene 1990-2018, much of the time focused on real estate, economic development and business. Reach him at Christian@EugeneWeekly.com.