On Tuesday, officials from across Chautauqua County hailed to opening of the Americold freezer facility off Williams Road in the town of Dunkirk. Watching the building go up in less than a year has been impressive while filling what was once an open field.

Less than one week ago, a comptroller’s report noted that even before this development, county Industrial Development Agency leaders have been busy. In 2020 alone, the report noted $1,069,087,959 total was split among 46 projects. That’s a tremendous amount of activity.

In recent years, the IDA has worked with the freezer facility — as well as Wells Corp. for its ice cream manufacturing. With the new site now in operation, those two recent projects alone total nearly $120 million of new funding into this region.

This translates into a stronger economy and more jobs in the north county. That’s a very cool result.