Projects by the Chautauqua County Industrial Development Agency and Chautauqua County Partnership for Economic Growth resulted in nearly $85 million in investments in 2025.
The CCIDA Board received the Choose CHQ 2025 Annual Report at its meeting Tuesday.
Economic Development Deputy County Executive and CCIDA CEO Mark Geise said while 2025 didn’t have project investments in the hundreds of millions like in 2023 and 2024, the IDA has already seen investments that exceed 2025 in the first two months of 2026, “My colleagues across the state, we met in Albany a couple of weeks ago for the EDC conference. And they’re all feeling that sort of headwind right now as well. There’s some trepidation, cautiousness, whatever you want to call it out there, but, you know, we had a solid year.”
Of the top ten economic development accomplishments for 2025, Geise said only nine of them actually made it to the authorization stage. He said these nine projects will provide an investment of nearly $85 million in Chautauqua County. These projects would also result in the retention of 243 jobs, the creation of 639 temporary construction jobs, and 39 permanent jobs. Projects that involve PILOTs (payments in lieu of taxes) will result in $4.85 million in new revenue for taxing jurisdictions over the terms of the PILOTs, which Geise said wouldn’t have been realized had these projects not moved forward.
Some of the key accomplishments last year included the relocation and expansion of Maplevale Farms in the Town of Mina, the finalization of incentives for the renovation of the Welch Building in Westfield; five solar projects with a combined investment of $32.8 million and producing a total of 16.4 MW of clean energy; the Tri-County Country Club reconstruction and expansion effort; and a $243,000 loan to support the Ivory Acres Wedding venue acquisition. The CCIDA also finalized planning for the $16+ million shovel-ready I-90 Veterans Memorial Commerce Park in Ripley.
Goals for 2026 include aggressive proactive business retention and expansion; completing and marketing two shovel-ready sites in both Ripley (I-90 Veterans Commerce Park) and Ellicott (Mason Industrial Park); acquiring and preparing new shovel-ready sites; reactivating properties of community importance, including the NRG Plant in Dunkirk, the Furniture Mart building in Jamestown, the former Lakeshore Hospital in Irving, the former Truck-Lite plant in Ellicott, and the Serta Simmons Building in Ellicott, among others; assisting both ImmunityBio (Dunkirk) and Electrovaya (Ellicott) to ramp up operations; and continuing to focus on implementing recommendations from the County’s Economic Development Strategy through CREDC and CCPEG.
The complete Choose CHQ 2025 Annual Report, featuring information for both the CCIDA and CCPEG, is available at ChooseCHQ.com.
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