Governor Terry Branstad. (file photo)
A small section of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant’s 19,000 acre campus in southeast Iowa is now a “certified site” and ready for private development.
Workers at the plant near Burlington make ammunition for the U.S. military. The property is owned by the federal government, but the state has gotten a 153-acre plot on the grounds for private development. Governor Branstad visited the site yesterday.
“You’ve got federal, state, private sector all working together and we know these certified sites gives us the opportunity to get bigger projects that can bring really good jobs to the state of Iowa,” he said.
Branstad said there’s a unique “selling point” on this site, because it’s connected to the military.
“You have additional security and so many companies that are looking for safety and wanting a secure environment, this is an additional advantage that they wouldn’t have at other locations,” Branstad said.
The Iowa Economic Development Authority has now designed a dozen sites around the state as “development ready.” Surveys have been done to determine things like water drainage patters and whether the presence of endangered species or Native American artifacts would stall development. The certification saves a business months if not years of that kind of prep work on a potential building site.
(Reporting by Rob Sussman, KBUR, Burlington)