Brenda Dryer, Executive Director, Boone County Economic Growth Corporation, September 11, 2026

Well, our guest on our program today, and kind of last second, made a last second change on it, but Brenda Dreyer is going to join us this morning. Brenda is, among other things, the executive director of Boone County Economic Growth Corporation, and first thanks for taking some time to come in here. Oh, you bet, Jim. I'm glad to do so. Well, we did have, and there was a reason you made contact and said, we have this press release, Jim, and it's got to do with the fact that our Economic Growth Corporation Executive Board has really entered into a letter of intent with LightEdge to offer or make a property available for them if they wish to locate a, well, we'll call it a data center here, but most people just kind of go crazy, co-location. I thought right away we got to figure out and explain to people what co-location means. So let's start there, Jim, because first and foremost, this is a company that's been in business for almost 30 years and has taken very good care of our personal data. So their customers are a lot of recognizable businesses across our state of Iowa. A lot of, it's good for our banks and our hospitals to have places to store information on their customers in a site that's not their own, and so this is a place where, again, multiple companies can have their equipment and go to that location and actually service their equipment and not have it housed in a different country or on the east or west coast, and so that's really what it is, and their customers are businesses and they have long-term relationships with those businesses. And I'm going to say right away some people, folks, let's use the hospital as an example because several, they made a, their hospital board several years ago made the decision, we can no longer afford to house our data storage on site. I mean, those are just the challenges that we are facing in a digital age. Yeah, and there's just a lot of different reasons why businesses decide to do that. Many times it's compliance, many times it's just for redundancy, and I think that's what I have really come to appreciate. I've had the opportunity in this kind of initial due diligence period to have been through the facilities in Altoona, and again, it seems like each one of their situations is different. We've talked to their customers, and they do it the core. This is a really good company who takes good care of their customers, who cares a great deal about making sure as their company continues to grow that they're doing it and identifying a location that adds diversity to their current operations and in a place that really makes sense for their customers. And so, yeah, again, probably the one person that's probably been through the facility the most in the last month as we've been making the decision on the letter of intent on the property, but because it is complicated, that's why under normal circumstances, people, we don't talk this early about, hey, we might get this project, but because it is complicated, the board, the exec board really felt like we needed to get it out there so we could start some conversations. And the other thing to remember, because right away, most people, they go right to the hyper sites, the large hundreds of acres, again, well, very sizable facilities that really use a lot of resources and so, obviously, any kind of data center is going to use resources, but the board did get to go take a look at some of the aspects of this. Let's talk about the water usage because that's usually the first thing that cited. One of the interesting things to me as we were looking through the cooling system at the Altoona facility was the water within that cooling system, the major part of that water has lived in that cooling system for 20 years. And so, it's a closed loop system, and I have analyzed three years of water, sewer, and sanitary bills on two different locations in Altoona. I have the actual bills, copies of the bills from the city of Altoona, and I'll tell you they water their lawn a lot in the summer, and they care a great deal about the facility and how it looks because their customers are coming in. They want a nice place for their employees, which, again, that's important to us as an economic development board when we're talking and selecting companies, we want people that keep nice property. So I would say the water usage in the summer is very compatible to what we would see with the business irrigation system, but the water, if I look at my own personal water usage in a family of three, knowing there's 10 to 20 employees in the building, it really equates to restrooms and washing hands, and the water usage is just very minimal. And because I didn't want just our opinion on that, you know, and we disclose, we've actually talked with the city to ensure that, again, we're in sync. We hear a lot, people are asking questions about water, and again, so we will provide that even in more detail to the city council and to folks that are specifically interested, but it does, it's about, when you have 10 to 12 people working there and customers coming in, we can track that water across to all three years to really see that. So it's closed loop system is very different than what people may be reading and seeing. But yeah, volume said, electricity, obviously, any kind of facility, especially this is going to use electricity, that's what it operates on, servers operate on electricity. So one of the things that over the next few weeks, we'll we've had conversations with Alliant and Alliant has talked with the board of directors, just to understand how important new low growth is to a utility. If those utilities aren't growing, then all of us that are ratepayers are having to pay for the maintenance and a lot of the things that need to be done on that system to ensure reliability. And so Alliant is available to us and we'll engage them and have them visit with folks too, as the time is appropriate. But again, I would direct people to the press release that is that information was provided to us by Alliant. And again, Alliant is making a number of investments here in the community. They're a brand new substation is adjacent to the to the area on the 10 acres. So again, 10 acres, not 100, 10 acres that we have signed the letter of intent on. And again, quite frankly, that proximity to that substation ensures that electric lines aren't being run huge distances in order to serve this project. And so again, the statement that they need growth to really maintain their rates are in the middle of a rate freeze till to like 2030. And a lot of that is because they've had good growth. And so I think again, I always say, you'll get the opportunity to hear from Alliant directly and not not just us saying that this is this is important. It's also a fabulous load because it runs all the time. When the rest of us aren't using electricity, they're using electricity. So we have a system built to ensure that they can run all the time. And then the great thing is, is that it's a really hot day in August and all of us get home from work. We want to turn on our air conditioners and our washing machines. Lightage has an interruptible load. And so they can actually come off the system and and they have generators on site that will allow them. So again, it makes us better stewards of the electric infrastructure we have in place. And for listeners, I want to just remind you that we are talking about the a proposal again and basically some of the things that are a Boone County Economic Growth Corporation board actually learned because they did a lot of vetting on this beforehand. Operation wise, again, I'm guessing these facilities, obviously you've got to have some people in there operating them. So it's probably not going to be a 40, 50, 100 type thing. But probably I'll take 10 places with 15 jobs. So one of the things that again, in the world of economic development, we're watching right now is our labor force. And we are hearing more and more that it's a little bit more interesting to recruit. I don't know really, truly the last time that Boone County's unemployment was less than stories, but it's been really trending that way since the first of the year. So we are sensitive to making sure that we're continuing to diversify the types of jobs we attract to the community. When the facility would be open, it would ultimately mean about 10 to 20 permanent positions. They are very well compensated technology related positions, their security positions. And again, something that's resonated with me a great deal is that they hire veterans. So we are a community with a National Guard base here. We have a lot of folks that have been veterans, a lot of folks that will age out and be veterans. And I feel like continuing to serve that population is important. Well, I don't have a lot of tech experience, so it kind of fits right into what they might be able to provide. Yeah. So the actual site manager in Altoona, who's been there the whole time, the facility. So again, amazing tenure of their staff is a retired veteran as a veteran of the services. And so it's been fun to hear his perspective on how great of an employer they've been for the 25, 27 years he's worked for them. The other obviously always people are talking about noise and these facilities, a lot of people don't know they exist. And so I think some of the boom growth exit boards would tell you they called friends that lived and family that live in Altoona ask that question of, do you know where it's at? What are you here? And so again, we'll be ultimately, you know, we've encouraged them to be strategic where they put the cooling fans so that just to be sensitive to that. We had decibel reading things that were out there. One of the comments was as my truck makes more noise than this building does. So yeah, so one of the things that has been very much a part of our conversation with them is that being very clear that the more things we can get down in really almost a development agreement in relationship to sound and capping water usage and discussing things like minimum tax assessments so that this council and future councils and future people involved in economic development have some, some certainty as to those things that were real important items. So there'll be some, some mention of where, where the, the noise levels will be, you know, what is the cap of the water? And again, it is, it's a very minimal, it is a really a large household amount of water. And ultimately, so we can do some good property tax planning into the future. I've had a lot of people in the last 12 hours say, well, what, what are the property taxes? And I feel pretty comfortable citing that obviously when Daisy comes available, there assessed value will be the largest in the community. But what I would tell you is that this will be number two. So it will be a substantial amount of, of tax space, partially because the investment is so large. I don't begin to understand how the assessor comes to what they do. And as we know, that's the heart of really what happens with our property taxes. That's what most people are struggling. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. So just the capital investment is so significant. So yeah, so well, once it becomes a little bit clear in terms of square footage, again, it's 10 acres. It's not hundreds of acres. It's 10 acres, which is going to be somewhat limiting even in an industrial zone, the size of the building. And so then we can start to do some better projections, but it will very quickly escalate to the second largest tax base in the community. Now, people need to remember, this is what we have Boone County Economic Growth for. You guys do a lot of this work. And again, council may be kept up to date on some of them. They might not be involved with a lot of the particulars at this point. But again, we've not been naive to the fact that we needed to be talking to the Economic Development Committee and the Utilities Committee just again to try to provide some information on utilities and even the electric utilities and understanding, okay, we have a 1% franchise tax on utilities. And so yeah, it's very grateful for really the committee structure that the community had the forward thinking to put into place because that has allowed us to ensure we don't get too far ahead of our partners. But exactly that is why we exist is to do some of this initial vetting. But Boone is a great community. And one of the things I would also cite is Boone Growth had an industrial site adjacent to a fairly new substation with water and sewer and sanitary that folks 20 years ago, Jim, maybe you were on the council then, but invested in making that investment, wanting growth. And so we have a project that we'll be able to get and use that without having to plow in more investment. And we have great community service where staff with full time fire, we have a wonderful police force. Those are things and points that we sell as benefits to bringing business to Boone. And again, I feel really grateful and again, I understand it could be a housing project that drives uncertainty and certainly we're going to work very hard to make sure we're getting correct data out there. At some point in time, we'll have an open house and I would stress for the residents of Boone and we'll provide them an opportunity to get kind of at that point in time if we make it along in the process, get a chance to get some of those questions answered. I know LightEdge is, they are looking at other sites, other locations. So when one that's being considered, we believe we have a very good site for them, a good opportunity for us. They were not really seeking like any tax credits or anything like that. They're looking to just be able to access infrastructure that's there. Correct. And so again, that's the other thing that is on my mind and there's a lot of things happening in the world, the property tax and limitations on what can happen with property tax and the ability that because they're not seeking any sort of incentives that would allow that tax base not only to roll in and be available to the city of Boone, certainly folks that pay attention to their tax bills know the largest taxing entity is our school district. And so I think about how great this is for the Boone School District, where again, there is another large taxing entity in the community and that's Fairway, but Fairway sits, most of that sits within the county jurisdiction in the United Community School District. And so this would be a good size tax base that would put some dollars into the school and obviously the hospital and DMACC and the county and yeah. So all in all, no, the point is, and you mentioned public meetings, information. Should we get to that point, I'm guessing is because you don't want to get ahead of the whole. Yeah. So we want to make people aware that that is the plan, at least from Boone County Economic Growth. We want to have information go out on this if we get selected. So what we have talked about and what we've talked with the company and actually specifically a lion about is Boone County Economic Growth, the exec board has talked that we would host an open house and again, I would stress for Boone residents and it would be our public entity or private entity hosting that and that we'd have areas where they can see information on water, electric, noise, see ultimately, hopefully a final site plan of how the building will lay out. But again, we're very committed to that. If it looks like we're moving in a positive direction and Boone is truly one of the final finalists will have that meeting. Okay. So stay tuned. Yeah. And I'll be back probably, right? Mordica. Yeah. So this is one of those things and I know it's at a time when a lot of people are really hearing a lot about the moratoriums on basically most of them are have to do with Hypersons. Yes. Correct. So the big, the giant for AI. So again, and that is will continue to be my message and the executive board's messages. These form an opinion on this particular economic development project based on the facts there. The facts of this project are very, very different than what you might be reading and hearing in other headlines. And so we have the information. We're going to be making that available to the city council on utility bills and electric bills and the opportunity ultimately, you know, for city staff to go see the facilities too. So they can ask questions that are important to them. But again, just ask questions. Do your research before you jump to the conclusion about what this is. I appreciate you taking time to come in and get us updated on what's happening because it is, it's one of those things. It's kind of exciting to have a business being considered here. This just happens to be what they all call a data center, but I like the co-location is right. It's basically, you got to store this data somewhere. Yeah. When the day is done, it's a beautiful warehouse and it just, this is what it has inside it. So yeah. So again, appreciate your time and, and the ability to get me on so quickly. We're just trying to get as much correct information out as we can. We look forward to updated information down the road. Thanks so much.