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Advanced Southwest Iowa outlines rural industrial-site plan, flags data‑center pipeline
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Summary
Advanced Southwest Iowa presented a quarterly update to the Pottawattamie County Board, proposing a rural industrial‑site initiative to prioritize due‑diligence on candidate sites using roughly $600,000 in remaining RPCIC funds and describing local housing and data‑center prospects that could strain utilities.
Paula Hazelwood, chief operations officer at Advanced Southwest Iowa Corporation, told the Pottawattamie County Board of Supervisors on April 20 that the agency is winding down the Rural Pottawattamie County Infrastructure Coalition (RPCIC) and will redirect residual funds toward a rural industrial‑site initiative to identify and desk‑certify potential industrial parcels.
Hazelwood said the RPCIC fund balance is “about $600,000” split roughly half from the county and half from the Iowa West Foundation. She described a plan to identify six candidate sites, prioritize three for full due diligence (surveys, Alta reports and grading plans) and hire an engineering firm to complete the certification work; Hazelwood said due diligence estimates for a single site can run in the tens of thousands of dollars and gave a recent estimate of about $72,000 for one parcel, adding “I anticipated it would be at least $50,000 per site.”
The initiative is intended to produce “Go Ready” desk certifications to make smaller sites (many under 100 acres) more marketable. Hazelwood pointed to early candidates in Underwood, Oakland, Avoca and other rural communities and said the work would rely on remaining RPCIC funds and Iowa West Foundation matching funds.
Hazelwood also briefed the board on housing and business pipeline activity in Oakland and Council Bluffs: the city is pursuing a mixed‑use development, two private developers are proposing duplexes and a larger phased housing project, and local manufacturers in Oakland are planning expansions. She said a local industrial park along I‑29 has its last building nearly complete and a developer has purchased adjacent acreage for a potential duplicate project, noting that sanitary sewer access, annexation agreements and road access remain limiting factors.
On data centers, Hazelwood said the county has several prospects in early pipeline stages but that some projects drop out because of utility and power‑validation requirements; she warned that power supply and permitting timelines, not local willingness, typically determine whether such facilities proceed. Hazelwood also discussed business retention and expansion visits planned for the summer and the organization’s contractor‑based housing consultancy to help local developers with financing and capital stacks.
The board asked several technical questions about water use for data centers and design details for industrial sites. Supervisor comments emphasized attention to road access and sewer capacity as projects advance. The update closed with no formal resolution, although Hazelwood said Advance would return with more specific requests if projects required county action.
