The move came to light at a preliminary discussion before a town planning board held on October 21, 2003 , which set a public hearing on the IBM plan for a meeting of the planning board set for November 18.

The expansion would be the addition of a 270,000 square foot annex on to Building 323 which itself was overhauled to become IBM's 300-mm wafer fab, the article said.

At its original size the fab was expected to create about 1000 jobs although the building has not been fully kitted out with equipment and was operating well below its planned capacity as of October 15, the article said.

IBM has not given cost, employment or capacity expansion estimates although the annex clean room is planned to be 76,000 square foot, the article said. Nor has any timetabling of the expansion been given, according to the article.

The article quoted an industry analyst saying he expected the project to cost more than $1 billion but less than $2 billion.