North Dakota official urges Jamestown to prepare for growth now

Rich Garman used the Jamestown/Stutsman Development Corp. annual meeting at Harold Newman Arena to argue that communities win growth by getting ready before a project arrives. The North Dakota Department of Commerce’s director of economic development and finance pointed to Jamestown and Stutsman County as an example of what happens when local leaders build ahead of demand instead of waiting for it.

The meeting took place Wednesday, June 24, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Harold Newman Arena lobby. Garman tied his message to the state Commerce Department’s recent push on site readiness, including its statewide umbrella subscription to LOIS and its purchase of Lasso, two tools meant to help communities keep property data current and answer corporate site-selection inquiries faster.

That broader effort is designed to give regional, county, local, downtown and tribal development groups access at no extra charge. Commerce says the goal is to help communities market sites, keep information updated and become, in the agency’s words, “ready and rapid” when a company starts looking for land, utilities and buildings.

In Jamestown, the clearest local test case is Spiritwood Energy Park. JSDC describes the site as a 551-acre industrial park about 10 miles east of Jamestown and just south of Spiritwood, with access to rail, Interstate 94, highway service, water, wastewater, and heavy power and steam from Great River Energy’s Spiritwood Station. JSDC says the park is majority owned and operated by the development corporation, with Great River Energy as the minority owner.

The long-term payoff of that kind of preparation is visible in the numbers. Bartlett & West says the Spiritwood Township Energy Park Plan cost $10.3 million and was completed in 2014 after an expedited design process that took about five weeks. The project added about 40,000 linear feet of track, 16 switches and enough rail capacity to land two unit trains, with more than 200,000 yards of material moved to build it out.

That infrastructure helped make room for Dakota Spirit AgEnergy, a 65 million-gallon-per-year ethanol biorefinery that now serves as the park’s anchor tenant. JSDC has long framed that kind of project as the point of its broader mission, which is to strengthen the local economy by creating quality primary-sector jobs, supporting business growth and positioning Jamestown and Stutsman County for long-term success.

Garman’s remarks turned that mission into a scorecard. In Stutsman County, the measure of readiness is no longer a promise on a stage, but the rail, utilities and industrial land already in place when the next employer starts looking.