Economic development sometimes a long process

Sometimes economic development projects happen over the course of a few months. Other times it can take years for a project to come to fruition. With the recent announcement about a data center coming to Aurora, I want to shed light on what it looks like when a project can take years to happen, in this case around 13+ years. 
Aurora’s road to a data center technically started in the early 2010’s with the Nebraska Department of Economic Development (DED). At that time DED created a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program to acquire ground across the state for a growing industry, which was data centers. 
This was long before my time at Aurora Development Corporation, so I can only speak from the information I have gathered over time.  Aurora was among a few communities awarded the grant, such as Kearney, Fremont, and South Sioux City.  I can only imagine the excitement the individuals working on the project, referred to as a power park, felt from receiving the CDBG funds, acquiring ground and starting a marketing campaign thinking that a new data center prospect would be just around the corner.  
That didn’t end up being the case. As the data center industry was growing, prospects that were looking at Nebraska weren’t excited about rural areas. One example is a Facebook data center that seriously considered Kearney as a location but pivoted to a metro community with a larger airport nearby. Data centers at that time were also large and very loud, which wasn’t an ideal fit for Aurora.  Over the last decade, the technology for data centers has improved like most of the technology industry. This moved the data center prospects back to looking at rural areas, with footprints that looked more like shipping containers and still carried a loud noise factor. As a result, there were discussions about if a data center was even an industry that we wanted to attract. Instead of moving away from the industry completely, Aurora Development Corporation created a list of criteria that a data center would need to meet for us to take their project seriously. Some of the criteria included: not a huge building, no containers, not loud, and not using water for cooling. 
During the same period, Southern Public Power District (SPPD) invested in a study that verified how much electricity a data center in a specific area of Hamilton County would be able to access at a variable rate. While the test wasn’t overly costly, it took about six months for it to be completed, giving Aurora a timing advantage over other areas that had not completed the study. With that study in hand, SPPD started reaching out to potential data centers letting them know we had ground available and a completed study.
Based on those efforts I met virtually with four different prospects. With each one, we stated all our criterias that we were looking for in a data center. Sometimes within the first few minutes of a call I knew that the prospect wouldn’t be a good fit for Aurora.  In the end there was one company that checked all our boxes.  
While this is an over-simplified account of the time and effort it took to attract a data center to Aurora, it is a good illustration of how economic development can involve playing a very long game. Sometimes the project that comes out on the other side looks nothing like the original intent.  For this specific scenario, I consider it a win for Aurora, landing a prospect that fit our criteria, while not taking the first project that came our way. Making sure a project is the right fit for Aurora and Hamilton County is always a good game plan. 
KELSEY BERGEN serves as executive director of the Aurora Development Corporation. She can be reached at kelsey@growaurora.com