Just one mile south of U.S. Highway 6 on County Road R16 is a work in progress by MidAmerican Energy Co. This new service center will include offices as well as indoor and outdoor storage areas for company equipment and assets.
The 170,000-square-foot service center will be staffed by 90 employees to start, with room to expand up to 130 employees, according to Geoff Greenwood, media relations manager for MidAmerican Energy.
The 147 acres of farmland for the center was purchased from Lemar Koethe in December 2016 for just over $3.9 million, according to county records. The purchase included a house and several outbuildings, which will eventually be demolished.
Greenwood said there are also plans to build a training facility just to the north of the service center. The site’s wastewater needs will be taken care of by a on-site septic tank and mound treatment system, he said. It will treat approximately 1,295 gallons per day.
Greenwood said MidAmerican chose this location because of its proximity to the various communities it will serve and with the projected growth of Dallas County, it made sense geographically so that they’d be able to best serve customers.
MidAmerican plans to close the Two Rivers service center in downtown Des Moines, he said, and the Dallas County service center and another service center currently under construction in Altoona will replace the Two Rivers location.
“One of MidAmerican’s core principles is environmental respect,” Greenwood said. He said the company is constructing the new facility with plans to operate it in a way that will minimize its environmental impact.
MidAmerican now provides its Iowa customers with more than 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources, and their newest proposed wind energy project — called Wind XII — will be the first investor-owned electric utility to generate renewable energy equal to 100 percent of their customers’ usage on an annual basis.
The projected completion date of the service center is January 2019.
