By JIMMY LAWTON

CANTON -- St. Lawrence County Industrial Development Agency has approved a tax break for Corning Inc., Canton that will assist in the retention of 249 jobs and allow for the expansion of operations.

Details on the project were not immediately available, however it includes construction of 9,000 square feet of warehouse space.

The savings provided to Corning by the tax break is estimated at $26,000.

The plant’s last major expansion was in 2014.

The plant started operations in 1966, making mirror blanks for telescopes and other optics applications. As business grew over the years, the plant expanded to 265,000 square feet, more than double its original size.

According to the company, the plant makes some of the world’s purest glass utilizing a manufacturing capability called chemical vapor deposition, a high-temperature process that deposits layer after layer of tiny glass particles on a growing surface, rather than cooling a molten liquid, a press release from the company said.

The plant manufactured the spacecraft windows for every manned U.S. space flight from Mercury through the Space Shuttle program. Other high-profile products from Canton over the years have included mirror blanks for the Subaru Telescope, two Gemini telescopes, and the Discovery Channel Telescope.

Today, the plant also provides materials to both the semiconductor and display-optics industries. Expertise in this field has led to significant new opportunities for the next phase of the plant’s history, Weinstein said.

Working closely with a longtime semiconductor equipment customer, Corning has developed a highly pure and thermally stable glass for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photolithography applications. The material is used as a mirror in stepper machines that write nanoscale features on computer chips.