Syracuse, N.Y. - Onondaga County is moving to evict a 91-year-old widow from her home in Clay, the same house the county promised she could live in for the rest of her life.
The Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency on Thursday served an eviction notice on Azalia King, who lives at 8700 Caughdenoy Road. That property sits at the edge of the 1,400-acre tract where Micron Technology plans to break ground in November on a huge chipmaking complex.
The eviction notice says King must leave in 90 days. Her family says they'll fight back.
"We'll take them to court and sue them for breach of contract and emotional distress on a 91-year-old lady," said her son, Terry King, who lives down the road.
OCIDA owns the land where King lives. Azalia King and her husband, Glenn, sold the land and house to OCIDA in 2005 under the threat of eminent domain. In return, OCIDA promised in a 10-page legal agreement that the couple could live there as long as either of them was alive.
Syracuse.com obtained a copy of that agreement, which states in the first paragraph that the Kings could occupy that house "until the death of the last to survive of Glenn King and Azalia King."
Glenn, who served as a volunteer firefighter in Clay for 70 years, died in 2015. He was 88.
Azalia, now 91, still lives in the house where many of her 20 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren gather for family picnics near the towering rhododendron bush in the back yard.
With the momentum of Micron's project surging, OCIDA now says Azalia King must go. The house sits at the spot where Micron plans to start cutting thousands of trees and bringing in millions of cubic yards of fill this fall.
"Please take notice that the undersigned, owner of the premises, elects to terminate your occupancy... effective as of January 16, 2026," read the notice of termination of tenancy delivered to King Thursday.
King's son said the eviction order has put further stress on his mother.
"Every other day it's like, 'Do I have to move?'" he said.
The county and the King family have been fighting about Azalia King's status since summer.
OCIDA initially offered King $5,000 to leave, which the family dismissed as an insult. OCIDA came up to $100,000, but the family said that wouldn't be enough to find Azalia a place to live out the rest of her life.
In 2005, the county bought the Kings' 47-acre farm for $330,750, land records show. Under the occupancy agreement, the Kings didn't have to pay property taxes or rent. Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said in June the Kings had received a benefit of more than $2 million over the years by avoiding rent and taxes.
He also pledged then that the county would help the family with Azalia's move.
"Certainly we're trying to work with Mrs. King to rectify the issue so that she's not impacted," McMahon said at a news conference.
County officials have tried to backpedal recently on the terms of the lifetime use agreement. In March, Micron submitted a draft environmental report to OCIDA saying that the lone remaining family on Caughdenoy Road "has life-long access rights to the property's single family house."
After reviewing and editing that draft, OCIDA released its own version of the report that altered Micron's wording to "license agreement," with no mention of King's lifetime rights.
The reports did not name King, but she is the only person living on Caughdenoy Road in a house owned by OCIDA.
Micron plans to build up to four fabrication plants, or fabs, over the next 20 years that would produce billions of memory chips used in data centers, cell phones and artificial intelligence. The site is at the northeast corner of Route 31 and Caughdenoy Road.
The Micron complex could one day employ 9,000 people and cover an area three times the size of the New York State Fairgrounds.
Terry King said the family is furious with the county and has no plans to move Mom without her receiving enough money to find a place to live for the rest of her life.
"If I have to barricade myself in the house with her," he said, "I guess that's what we'll do."