The Chicago Plan Commission voted last week to approve Palo Alto, California-based PsiQuantum's plans to transform the steel mill at the mouth of the Calumet River at Lake Michigan on Chicago's Southeast Side into a quantum computing park.
PsiQuantum plans to construct a 300,000-square-foot quantum computing facility at the former steel mill site at 8080 S. DuSable Lakeshore Drive that would anchor a high-tech campus that the state of Illinois sees as a Silicon Valley-like opportunity to invest in an emerging technology that potentially could become the next big thing.
The site, at the mouth of the Calumet River, has been vacant since the South Works steel mill closed in 1992. U.S. Steel operated the largest steel mill in the country in the 19th century there.
The Pittsburgh-based steelmaker has long owned the land on Lake Michigan next to Steelworkers Park, which Chicago extended DuSable Lakeshore Drive to in the hope of spurring development. Several redevelopment projects have been pitched over the years for one of the largest vacant waterfront sites in the country and a "Mariano's coming soon" sign by the entrance long offered an empty promise that never materialized.
PsiQuantum now aims to develop a one-million qubit utility-scale quantum computer, saying its mission is to develop the first useful quantum computers. It hopes that the agriculture, pharma, energy, financial services, materials and manufacturing industries will want to harness such advanced computing power.
The company was founded in 2015, is backed by prominent investors and partners with the U.S. Department of Energy and DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Project Agency.
The state and local governments have lined up $1 billion in incentives to bring the quantum computer in the United States to the site of the former steel mill.
Related Midwest will develop the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, or IQMP.
The developer told the Chicago Plan Commission it has awarded $395 million to minority-owned and women-owned companies. It's hired 530 people from local communities across 29 previous projects, offered 20 first opportunity contracts for local startups and helped 42 small business secure small business loans.
The business park will be affiliated with the University of Illinois but also will have partners like the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, UIC, Chicago State, Fermilab, the Chicago Quantum Exchange and the Argonne National Laboratory.
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