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County unveils commercial property portal; officials warn data centers strain power, discuss Great Lakes Cheese site
Summary
Allegany County’s economic development director demonstrated a new commercial property aggregator on the county website. County economic development staff and the industrial development agency also discussed constraints on data center projects and initial work on reusing the Great Lakes Cheese building in Cuba.
Ashley Smith, Allegany County director of economic development, demonstrated a new commercial property portal on the county website that aggregates available commercial listings via a private vendor, Resimplify.
Smith said the tool automatically pulls listings from local brokers and agents and allows filtering by square footage, land, sale or lease status, and attachments such as PDF flyers. The portal is limited to commercial listings; Smith said owners can notify the county about unlisted properties and the vendor will maintain the entry. She described plans to embed property feeds into the county’s CRM and to use metrics from the portal to see which properties attract the most inquiries.
Craig Clark of the Industrial Development Agency (introduced in the meeting materials as Craig Clark) cautioned the committee about so‑called data centers, which he called “energy suckers.” Clark said such facilities consume large amounts of electricity, typically provide few local jobs, and can outstrip local power availability. He cited a past local proposal for a facility in Wellsville that did not proceed.
Clark also reported that Great Lakes Cheese closed production on Jan. 31 at its Cuba facility and that county staff are in early discussions with potential developers. Clark said the county expects to provide timeline information about water and sewer availability to interested developers; the Crossroads water infrastructure and DEC regulatory questions remain part of the evaluation. Clark said the county will return with more concrete updates — including an update from Tom Windis — at the next month’s meeting.
Smith’s demonstration and Clark’s remarks were informational; no committee action was taken on the portal or the industrial site discussions at this meeting.
