Weekly news on the construction boom next door

Coherent broke ground June 16 on a $650 million expansion of its Sherman semiconductor campus, aiming to double the site's production space and add more than 1,000 jobs, including 550-plus direct manufacturing, engineering, and technical roles.

The expanded building scales up production of 6-inch indium phosphide wafers, the material behind the optical components that move data between AI chips, servers, and data centers at the speed of light. Coherent calls Sherman home to the world's first volume-production fab for that technology.

The project is backed by a $50 million CHIPS Act grant, on top of roughly $17 million in earlier support from the Texas CHIPS program and the Sherman Economic Development Corporation. NVIDIA, which invested $2 billion in Coherent in March for R&D and U.S. manufacturing capacity, is a major customer for the expanded line. Coherent expects to quadruple wafer output at the site within a year of the new building coming online.

Noble Ridge, a master-planned community on the west side of US-75 in Howe, is underway with roughly 700 homes planned. Phase 1-A (about 170 homes from K. Hovnanian and Starlight Homes) is already selling, and Phase 1-B, another 170 homes from Lennar, is now under construction. Homes range from 1,300 to 2,700 square feet, starting around $300,000.

On the east side of US-75, a 182-acre tract long known as the Hightower property, held by the same family through Texas land grants dating to the 1800s, has been sold to Cherukuru Investments. Developer John St. Clair, whose firm Younger Partners is handling the project, says 40,000 vehicles a day pass the property's highway exit. Plans call for a master-planned residential community with a commercial component along FM 902, the first major development on Howe's east side.

Grayson County's land records tell the same story: the county's appraised value for greenfield sites along the US-75 corridor has roughly doubled since 2022.

TxDOT's US 75 Project is widening the highway from four divided lanes to six through Sherman and Denison, with new U-turns at cross-street bridges for better access. The full build includes reconstructed ramps, bridges, retaining walls, a new storm drain system, and interchange work along the corridor.

The first segment, from US 82 to SH 91, remains on schedule to finish this fall. A second segment, from US 82 to North Loy Lake Road, is targeted for fall 2027. Combined, the two projects are valued at roughly $325 million.

Local businesses and commuters have felt the short-term pinch of lane closures and detours through mid-2026, but the project is designed to unlock the highway capacity Sherman's job growth is already outpacing.

GlobiTech, a subsidiary of Taiwan-based GlobalWafers, is adding a new manufacturing facility to its existing 143-acre site at US-75 and FM 1417 in Sherman. The project is expected to create 1,500 new jobs and represents billions of dollars in capital investment over its full build-out.

Construction on phase one starts in 2026, with operations targeted for 2029. Phases two through four follow through 2039. The plant will produce advanced 300mm silicon wafers domestically, closing a supply chain gap that currently sends most of that production to Asia.

The state has backed the project with a $15 million Texas Enterprise Fund grant and a Veteran Created Job Bonus, on top of local incentives from the Sherman Economic Development Corporation.

Texas Instruments has started production at SM1, its newest 300mm semiconductor wafer fab in Sherman, roughly three and a half years after the project broke ground. The $40 billion facility will ramp with customer demand toward tens of millions of chips produced daily, and is expected to support about 3,000 direct jobs.

SM1 is the first of up to four connected wafer fabs planned for TI's Sherman mega-site, which together are expected to support as many as 3,000 direct jobs and thousands more in supporting industries. The Sherman campus is part of TI's broader plan to invest more than $60 billion across seven fabs in Texas and Utah, the largest investment in foundational semiconductor manufacturing in U.S. history.

SEDCO's major employers list for Sherman runs more than 30 companies deep, and it's a genuinely varied mix: Coherent, GlobiTech, GlobalWafers America, and Texas Instruments anchor the semiconductor side, while Tyson, Eaton, Emerson, Mueller, Progress Rail, Eternity Technologies, Omega Industries, and dozens of others cover everything from food processing to rail equipment to industrial manufacturing.

Tyson Foods has been part of Sherman since 2005 and now employs nearly 1,800 people at its case-ready meat facility, converting beef and pork from other Tyson plants into the steaks, chops, and ground meat that reach grocery shelves. The Sherman plant received state assistance in 2025 to support a facility expansion.

On the semiconductor side, SEDCO recently recognized Coherent with a performance-based incentive payment for more than $19.2 million in qualified investment and an average of 363 full-time employees at its Sherman site, a separate, smaller milestone from the company's larger $650 million expansion covered above, and a reminder that growth here isn't just the headline projects.

The full roster, updated by SEDCO, covers employers including 903 Brewers, Alorica, ALPLA, Altium, AssetCare, Capio, Christmas Designers, Commissary Express, Critical Access, Modular Power Solutions, Nature's Source, Plyler Construction, Presco, Robit, Royal Case Company, Starr Aircraft, Sunny Delight, Synergy Windows and Doors, Texas Building Supply, and Washington Iron Works.