Amkor Builds Chips, Not Apartments. Axon Should Follow Suit.

By Alexander Lomax

Photo Credit: Amkor

A real plant, no strings attached

Amkor just landed one of Arizona’s biggest chip deals ever. The Tempe firm secured a $1.5 billion Nvidia prepayment to expand its advanced packaging plant. That facility rises in Peoria, near the TSMC fabs anchoring the state’s chip corridor. It will package the processors powering the AI boom. Amkor is worth billions. It builds real things that ship worldwide.

Notice what Amkor did not demand. No apartments. No condos. No special law to dodge zoning review. Now weigh that against Axon’s 1,200-unit housing plan in Scottsdale. While one company is building the other bargains for real estate.

The Peoria standard

Amkor’s Peoria plant is a $2 billion investment. It already won federal chip funding. Nvidia’s cash now supercharges the expansion. This is what serious manufacturing looks like. No hostage-taking. No zoning theater. Simply shovels and jobs.

Then there is Axon

Axon, another multibillion-dollar company, insists it cannot build a headquarters without housing. Half apartments half condos, except they won’t guarantee that their condos will be condos, meaning Mayor Borowsky’s brokered “compromise” is a failure until this is rectified. All near Loop 101 and Hayden Road. The residential piece was never about the workspace. It was always about the real estate.

Axon Rendering

When residents pushed back, Axon did not compromise first. It backed a state law to erase their referendum. Twenty-seven thousand signatures got steamrolled. That isn’t a partnership or being a good stakeholder, it’s bullying until you get your way.

The double standard is obvious

Two Arizona giants. Two very different attitudes. Amkor builds. Axon demands. One respects the community. The other bulldozes it. If a chip titan can expand without apartments, so can a Taser maker. The excuse collapses on contact.

Axon says the housing makes the project “work.” Amkor makes billion-dollar projects work without a single unit. So spare us the lecture about necessity. The apartments were always a want dressed up as a need. Scottsdale never owed Axon a captive rental market. Residents said so. Twice, in fact. The company just did not want to hear it.

A better path forward

Here is the simple fix. Axon should drop the apartments. Build the headquarters. Build the manufacturing. Add the hotel and the offices. Bring the 5,500 jobs Scottsdale wants. North Scottsdale is awash in apartments as is the rest of Scottsdale with tens of thousands already approved and in the pipeline.

Do that, and the lawsuits fade. The referendum fight ends. The neighbors exhale. The company gets its campus. The city gets its tax base. The jobs still land. Everybody wins.

Amkor just showed how it is done. Arrive with ambition, not entitlement. Build the thing you promised. Leave the land grab at home. The hubris is the problem, not the zoning. Unite the community. Then break ground. That is the deal Scottsdale deserves. And it is one Amkor already modeled.