GUEST EDITORIAL

GUEST EDITORIAL

MOSES LAKE - 2011 has ended and we are well into 2012. When compared with the doom and gloom reported about the national and global economy, Grant County is still catching attention around the world as a shining star. In 2011 we saw a new data center project break ground in Quincy, and an oil seed crushing facility break ground in Warden.

We also saw Microsoft and Yahoo! complete the second phases of their data centers in Quincy while the SGL Automotive Carbon Fiber facility became operational in Moses Lake. In the few short months of 2012 we have already heard the announcement that Dell Computers data center is complete and that Amway is going to construct an extraction and concentration facility in Quincy.

Major Job Creating Projects

Projects that started construction

Pacific Coast Canola broke ground in September on its Canola crushing facility located in Warden. Mayor Capetillo, Miss Warden, Terry Brewer, executive director of the Grant County EDC, Port of Warden officials and Grant County officials were all present to move a few shovels of dirt where the foundation of the plant will go.

Joel Horn, president and CEO of Pacific Coast Canola, said he is excited to be a part of the community and to contribute to the local and regional economies. The plant is scheduled to finish construction late in 2012 or early 2013. They estimate that once the building is operational there will be 30-40 permanent jobs. The new plant will sit on 52 acres and it is estimated that the cost of the project will be $109 million.

The EDC has worked cooperatively on this project with the both the port and City of Warden, Grant County, and the Grant County Public Utility District for more than six years. Seeing ground broken and construction start has been rewarding to all involved. Pacific Coast Canola is currently hiring its management team for the facility and can be found on the web at http://pacificcoastcanola.com.

Vantage Data Centers broke ground on a new data center campus that will develop in several phases, starting with a 6MW state-of-the-art, enterprise class data center, vertically scalable to 9MW. Phase one of the campus which is now under construction includes a one story, 133,000 square-foot data center that will be completed by August 2012. A Fortune 100 company has already signed a lease as the first tenant in the facility.

Sabey started and finished work on the first of three buildings at its new data center campus in Quincy and the first tenant has already moved into the facility. The newly constructed building is 139,000 square feet and when phases two and three are completed the entire Sabey Campus will total over 500,000 square feet of data center space.

Projects that were completed

Dell Computers opened a new 140,000 square-foot technology center/data center in Quincy that will provide customers in North America access to cloud technologies and IT outsourcing services.

The facility is a world-class, multi-client data center, with redundant network connectivity, uninterruptible power supply (UPS), cooling, utility and back-up emergency power generation.

The EDC first started working with Dell in 2010 on what was then known only as "Project Roosevelt."

Both Microsoft and Yahoo! completed the second phases of data center construction in Quincy:

Microsoft's new addition is a modular data center that will house containers full of servers. Traditionally data centers have been built as large facilities with specialized infrastructure and rooms that are dedicated for housing computer servers. The modular design is much different. In the modular design the servers are housed in a portable container that can be shipped by rail or truck. These mini "portable" data center containers are then plugged in when they arrive on site. This design allows for greater flexibility for scaling up or down the capacity of the data center.

Yahoo! used its own proprietary design for its second phase. It calls the design the "Yahoo Computing Coops" and it is modeled after the design of chicken coops. The Coop circulates hot air up and out of the structure by allowing cool air to enter from the sides and channeling and forcing the hot air out of the top. The design significantly reduces the amount of electricity and water needed to keep the temperature at the optimum level for the servers to operate.

Ongoing Projects

Amway purchased 12 acres of land in Quincy, to build a 48,000-square-foot extraction and concentration facility to process ingredients for nutritional products sold under its NUTRILITE® brand. The agreement includes an option for an additional 15 acres of property. The ground breaking on the $31.8 million facility will occur later this year and it will be operational in early 2014. Once completed, the facility will employ approximately 30 people in manufacturing and quality assurance.

Guardian Industries has continued construction on its 500,000+ square-foot fiberglass insulation manufacturing facility located in the Wheeler Industrial Corridor of Moses Lake. The Grant County EDC has worked with Guardian Industries since 2003 and has been informed that when the homebuilding market in the northwest (including Canada) has returned to levels where demand for fiberglass insulation is adequate, the facility will begin hiring and become operational.

It is anticipated that the facility will employ around 128 people when operating at full capacity.

Specialty Chemicals halted construction on its Moses Lake facility in 2009 due to the economic downturn and this continued through 2011. The EDC continues to work closely with Specialty Chemicals and it is expected that as the economy recovers construction on the facility will resume. When the facility is fully operational it will employ approximately 50 people.

Population Growth

According to the Washington State Office of Financial Management (OFM), Grant County ranked fourth in the state in terms of population growth between 2010 and 2011. The OFM reported population increased by 980 residents or 1.09 percent from 89,120 to 90,100.

In a separate estimate, the United States Census Bureau reported that between April 2010 and July 2011 that the population in the county grew an estimated 2,145 or 2.4 percent. The differences in the estimates are the methodologies used but both sources report strong population growth in Grant County.

Grant County Employment

According to the Washington State Employment Security Department, Grant County employment grew by 340 jobs during 2011. The numbers reported for January and February of 2012 are even more encouraging with employment for both of those months at all-time highs. January 2012 employment was up 2,010 jobs (5.9 percent) over January 2011, February 2012 employment was up 1,450 jobs (4.2 percent) over February 2011, and March 2012 employment was up 1,420 (4.0 percent) over March 2011.

Worth noting is that while population in the county has grown, the total number of people in the labor force has remained constant. In 2010 the Labor Force was estimated at 41,900 people, and in 2011 it was also estimated at 41,900 people.

Agriculture

The Columbia Basin Irrigation Project is the largest economic development project ever to be undertaken in Central Washington and it is now expanding. 

For the dry land farmers in the southern part of the Columbia Basin, this will help alleviate much of the water problem, as many wells are drying out and farmers have had to dig deeper and deeper to irrigate their crops. 

The Office of Columbia River (OCR), formed by the Department of Ecology in 2006 to find new sources of water for irrigation, successfully secured a new water source form the Lake Roosevelt Storage Releases Project. 

There was only one snag in this plan, the East Low Canal that will deliver the water, bottlenecks as it goes underground at I-90.

The US Bureau of Reclamation had installed two pipes to accommodate additional water at the Weber Siphon Complex but only ever connected one. To connect the second pipe the OCR contributed $800,000 for the design and worked with the Bureau of Reclamation for additional funding for construction.  

In September 2009, Mowat Construction Company of Woodinville, Wash., was awarded the contract to build the connecting pipe for $20.2 million. The project will supply irrigation water to roughly 10,000 acres, in the Odessa Subarea which currently depend on deep wells.

The project will also meet Washington's Columbia River Water Management Act, which entails development of new water supplies while meeting the economic and community development needs of people, and preserving the environment.

The OCR projects that 21,000 acre-feet from Lake Roosevelt will be moved through the pipe, protecting 543 jobs and $38 million of annual income in the Columbia Basin. The first water should be passing through the newly constructed pipe early this spring.

Sources for statistics: Washington State Department of Revenue, Washington State Employment Security Department, Washington State Labor Market and Economic Analysis, Washington State Office of Financial Management.