ELLY GRIMM

   • Leader & Times

There has been much going on in the area in terms of economic development, and as Seward County Development Corporation (SCDC) Executive Director Eli Svaty tells it, there are no immediate plans to slow that work down.

“It’s definitely an exciting time for us, there’s a lot in the pipeline,” Svaty said. “With the Apogee Energy project, things have been kind of quiet the past few months with that because there’s been an intense focus on securing the contracts and securing buyers and working out those logistics, and they’ve been very successful in that work locking down some of that and ensuring everything. As of the end of May, they are looking to be operational by Q4, and there’s a lot of work to be done between now and then in terms of getting the facilities ready and all of that, because they’ve got some big orders that need to be ready by Q1 of 2027. The plan for this Liberal facility is really assembly, with the battery sales will still be made from Taiwan. Apogee does have contracts with some additional companies out of Taiwan who they’ve worked with for several years, and all of that is currently being worked out and ensured.”

And that is not all, Svaty said.

“There’s another company that’s been doing some site visits in the community, and it’s a logistics company that handles road-to-rail work,” Svaty said. “I know there have been many, many discussions about how wonderful an additional rail stream would be and how we could bring in new industries with that – it’s all true, but there’s a huge, huge price tag involved to bring that in. This particular company is handling the logistics side of things, so they can take whatever payload from the factory and get it on the rail through our Union Pacific lines and vice versa. For example, if we’d have to ship in materials from an overseas company, if we established a foreign trade zone here, they could ship in the materials and bring everything to site through this rail company instead of what they do right now. Right now, materials come in through port, goes all the way to Kansas City, and then gets trucked to Liberal. With this company, after the materials come into port, they can come straight to Liberal on site through this trade zone and then finish the manufacturing before selling and transferring everything. This company does have a presence in Southeast Kansas at Great Plains Industrial Park, but they’re not really excited about it because the facility’s old and rather dilapidated, and they don’t want to be there. There’s not a lot of activity right now in that industrial park. With their site vitise here, however, they’re much more excited about what we have going on and that potential for partnership.”

And there could be some more industrial partners coming, Svaty said.

“In terms of Requests For Proposals (RFP) and other incentive packages that are in some level of development, one is Project Zeke, which is a value-added agriculture company out of Europe that wants to be located close to local meat-packing operations,” Svaty said. “There aren’t very many places in the U.S. with that, so they are looking at doing some potential site visits in July around Southwest Kansas. We’ve done a few rounds of submissions for potential sites for that, and so far, we’re continuing to exceed those expectations from the company. I did have the chance to meet with the company rep last month, so we’ll see how that project goes. Project Pillars is an advanced manufacturing company that works in the data center world – rather than the actual data center, however, it’s the carriages for those particular elements, so that includes HVAC, welding and other things we do really well around here. They’ve received their incentive package from the state during this review process. Project Proteus just came from the state, that’s another value-added agriculture company interested in locating here for beef processing, and we’ll see how that also goes.”

There has also been much work in regard to retail, Svaty continued.

“We do have a retail developer who has been working on a project for slightly more than a year now, and he has a new site plan with some potentially interested tenants,” Svaty said. “A lot of those numbers are coming back really positively, so I hope to have a meeting with him soon and continue that work. This gentleman has worked in retail development for about 30 years, and it’s amazing working with that type of experience.”

Much discussion has also surrounded Southwest Kansas regarding data centers, Svaty said.

“With as much chatter as there is out there, I think you’ll find a lot of that is speculation,” Svaty said. “There are large-scale data centers looking at sites in Kansas, and there are some centers in Kansas, but really, the amount of legitimate projects is not as high as what some people might think. Kansas is way behind compared to some other places, which could put us in a slightly better position since we could see how other states structure their incentives, how they dealt with everything, and prepare ourselves for everything. There are only 19 data centers in Kansas right now compared to Texas and Virginia, which have several hundred between the two. This is something not exactly new to the U.S., but it is pretty new to Kansas. The most important thing to keep in mind about this, from a city standpoint, is if Liberal is identified as a potential site or has the opportunity to work with one of these, the Liberal City Commission has a large amount of leeway in terms of requests and demands from these companies. One of the biggest benefits for cities is the sales tax and franchise fee on power – for every 100 megawatts of power this data center is, it’s about $2.5 million in franchise fees that would go back to the city.”

Svaty said there are multiple misconceptions to clear up for the public.

“When it comes to the actual activity ... when you think about these data centers just popping up all throughout the U.S., they’re actually not,” Svaty said. “There are not nearly as many active projects in the pipeline as people might think. I know there’s also a lot of conversation going on about water usage by these data centers, but the state has checks and balances in place already so companies can’t even really look at a particular area if there’s a project that’s going to use high levels of water. Are there centers that use significant amounts of water? Yes, especially around the Great Lakes region, but no project would be permitted in Western Kansas if that were the case. Projects in this area would probably use a gel-based or other liquid cooling system or air-cooled system. I know data centers have been a hot topic, so that’s what’s going on with that in this area. I think a project like think could be a huge potential win for the state, especially in the more rural areas where workforce demands aren’t significant but tax revenue and franchise fees are, so there’s a lot of potential there.”