< Previous188 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTION The Lewises’ enterprises today include ProjectXYZ, a technical engineering and manufacturing solutions provider whose growth and workforce development outreach continue in the Huntsville and in the Muscle Shoals region. They have other irons in the fire too, in such arenas as broadcast TV, logistics, alternative energy and yes, that seed and feed store. “We now own the oldest seed and supply store in the state,” Larry says of Coldwater Seed and Supply, which originally located in downtown Tuscumbia in 1921 and draws its name from the Coldwater Creek that flows into the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals. “We are owner number six. At the opening celebration we had the former owner or a representative of the owner’s family from all six families. “So we are truly diverse, from a seed store to selling missiles,” he says, referring to the international defense portion of ProjectXYZ’s business. “Luckily the defense business is good to augment some of the challenges with the nostalgia.” The Lewises’ work with Downtown Tuscumbia Inc. and Opportunity Alabama figures to help improve the downtown refresh, as does a potential affiliation with the Main Street revitalization program. “Now we’re going to do a community bank,” says Larry, who sits on the Opportunity Alabama board as well as the Shoals EDA board. Manufacturing? Sure. In January 2020, the Lewises were in their office talking about plans for the year when they got a call from the Shoals Economic Development Authority to gauge their interest in investing in an automotive operation in town, CBC INGS America, LLC. The Japanese company was looking to get out of the space, but Shoals area leaders didn’t want to lose those jobs. “We closed around the Fourth of July and took over,” Larry says. “It’s primarily a plastic injection molding facility focused on lighting components and metallization [e.g. making the inside of that plastic- lined headlight structure look like metal]. We took over and saved about 140 jobs. We’ve now grown close to 200 people and we’ve expanded our customer base.” That includes work for other automotive companies. “We have also designed our own product called Wire- Ups, a tool for hunters that allows you to cross barbed-wire fences,” Larry Lewis says of a product that has proved popular with law enforcement agencies too. In a statement that seems to reflect a pattern, Larry says, “I didn’t know that was a thing until someone came to me and wanted to make it out of plastic.” ProjectXYZ employs nearly 130 on the defense side, which is the Lewises’ biggest revenue driver, driving between $35 million and $40 million of the company’s $54 million in revenue in 2023. “We sell weapons systems we don’t use to foreign military partners,” Larry says, noting the Hawk missile is being used extensively in Ukraine. “We have 10 employees in Poland who talk to the Ukraine military just about every day. We have helped the Army refurbish those systems and get them shipped from our facility in El Paso, Texas.” For the Chaparral system, Egypt is the biggest user. ProjectXYZ’s footprint includes a corporate headquarters in Huntsville, an older 38,500-sq.-ft. manufacturing facility primarily used for logistics and another 20,000-sq.-ft. facility behind it. Another facility is the BizTech incubator with around 10,000 sq. ft. of engineering and lab space and then workspace for startups and non-profits. “The atmosphere here makes it easier to do those things,” Kim Caudle Lewis says, SITE SELECTION JANUARY 2025 189 noting the catalytic effect of Redstone Arsenal and its ecosystem of government contracts. “The community invites it because you have tons of engineers, the highest level of PhDs and a lot of creative thinkers looking outside the box. There are a lot of companies in town that are offshoots from entrepreneurs within other companies, based on individuals’ intellectual property. The area encourages that mindset: People can have a full-time job but also start their hobbies which turn into businesses later.” Larry Lewis says Huntsville is progressive, but hasn’t always had access to investors and private equity capital. That used to mean under-capitalized startups would move to Austin or Silicon Valley to gain that access. “What made Huntsville thrive was doubling back down on defense,” he says, with federal dollars driving the growth of the area’s Inc. 5000 companies. Site Selection analysis showed Huntsville was home to 18 of Alabama’s 45 Inc. 5000 companies in 2024 (Birmingham had 15), good enough to rank the metro area No. 49 in the nation. Alma Mater Ambitions The future also means future workforce. The Lewises are on top of that too, via ongoing work with two- and four-year colleges and via the company’s workforce development program through Larry’s alma mater Deshler High School. “Nobody on our side of the river had any students,” he says, so he went to Deshler, where he serves on the career tech advisory board, and found two students looking for jobs. “They told some other students, and six students showed up. That first year, we had close to 15 students, all word of mouth,” he says. “Over the past three years, we’ve built up our infrastructure. We hired a student coordinator. We have brought in tons of students from all of the high schools just to show and tell ... We’ve slowed down intentionally this year so we can manage the program. We are writing a proposal right now to the State of Alabama for additive manufacturing to train student in 3D printing,” and more soft skills programming is in the works. Competing with extra-curricular activities and studies makes it hard to get hours so the company moved to a Saturday shift. “It makes us more competitive with the McDonald’s and Lowe’s,” Larry Lewis says. “They can pick up a significant amount of hours, and it gives us more opportunity to pour more into them. We can spend more time training and talking with them differently.”190 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTION The homegrown program may dovetail with the new Alabama Workforce Pathways Act passed last year to offer the option of science and math credits for high school career and tech programs. “The State of Alabama is being a little innovative with some of the grants they’re putting out for workforce development and entrepreneurship,” says Kim Caudle Lewis. “Some of the programs are geared toward rural areas, minorities and women. When DEI is under attack, for the State of Alabama to continue this is very progressive.” Larry Lewis says career and technical education can be a tool or pathway out of the poverty that still persists in some rural communities and small towns. “If we can catch them early, put them inside where they’ve got a job and can earn money, they can see there’s another way out of the circumstance,” he says. “Right now I may pay more for someone with a mechanical or technical degree than someone with a BS,” says Kim Caudle Lewis, whose associate’s degree from Calhoun Community College helped her get a start in health care IT. “I can show you can have an associate’s degree and nothing else. It’s one of the reasons we try to tell our story, to show it’s doable and attainable.” The ProjectXYZ program with Deshler has 10 to 12 students now. But there are four cities and two counties in the Shoals, and nearly all of the high schools plan to bring their students by the operation. Lewis anticipates adding 10 to 15 students for next school year. “For 2025-26,” he says, “we intend to be at 40 students.” “Larry and Kim Lewis of Project XYZ have made a remarkable impact on the Shoals area, supporting economic growth and community development through their visionary efforts,” says Shoals EDA President Kevin Jackson. He says their expertise and devotion to the region have “fostered a sense of optimism, encouraging both entrepreneurs and established businesses to invest in the future of the Shoals. Their work continues to inspire positive change, boosting both the local economy and the overall quality of life for residents.” Photo courtesy of Larry Lewis and Kim Caudle Lewis SITE SELECTION JANUARY 2025 191 Heartland to the Jetting W hat do jet fuel and data centers have in common? They bring people together. In the U.S. Midwest these days, mega-projects in these sectors are bringing folks together in more ways than one. In Moorhead, Minnesota, DG Fuels is investing $5 billion to build a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plant just across the state line from Fargo. In Johnstown, Ohio, not far from the exact geographic center of the Buckeye State, Cologix is investing $7 billion to construct an 800-megawatt data center campus. And in Holdrege, Nebraska, DG Fuels is committing an additional $4.2 billion to erect another SAF factory in rural Phelps County. Throughout the heartland of the country, corporate investment deals like these are gravitating to small towns and farming communities, places that have long embraced the importance of human connection. I asked the CEO of DG Fuels and the CFO of Cologix to describe the factors behind the choice of these locations. Fueling a New Kind of Flight You can drive the 564 miles from Holdrege to Moorhead in a little over eight hours, but the company investing a combined $9.2 billion in these two communities would prefer that you fly. That’s because their end product — sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) — is engineered to not just revolutionize air travel but also make it cleaner and greener. Washington, D.C.–based DG Fuels LLC announced last August 7 that it would invest $4.2 billion to establish its first Midwest SAF plant in tiny Holdrege in Phelps County in south central Nebraska. With 5,549 people, Holdrege is known for growing crops and being home to The Speakeasy, a restaurant that many people regard as the best steakhouse in all of Nebraska. Fittingly, the eatery is located in the middle of a remote cornfield. The new SAF plant here will produce 193 million gallons of zero or low-CO2 lifecycle emissions SAF per year and meet all commercial jet fuel standards. Production is set to begin in 2030 on a facility that by RON STARNER ron.starner@siteselection.com MIDWEST Aviation fuel maker, AI cloud hyperscaler bet big on small Midwest towns. Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) produced by DG Fuels in Moorehead will be refined and transported to MSP International Airport, where multiple commercial airlines will buy the fuel and use it to fly their passenger jets. Photo courtesy of MSP International Airport192 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTION is expected to generate $ billion in economic impact over years. Upon operation, the factory will employ full-time workers and reach $ million in total annual payroll. Annually, DG Fuels will purchase . million tons of corn stover and pump $ million into the pockets of farmers in south central Nebraska. Ron Tillery, executive director of Phelps County Development Corp., says the project will require , megawatts of electrical power and is one of SAF plants that DG Fuels plans to build around the country. DG Fuels followed up the Nebraska announcement with an even bigger one in Moorhead a few months later. On November , the fi rm said it would commit $ billion toward a -million-gallon- per-year SAF plant in this western Minnesota city of , residents, who are part of the larger Fargo- Moorhead MSA of , people. is plant on acres is expected to employ people and generate a total economic impact of $ billion. e end product will be delivered to e sheer volume of biomass makes the Midwest a great location for producing sustainable aviation fuel. Having a proactive state is always a good thing for a project.Minnesota on its own worked out a deal to have SAF refi ned there. We wish more states did that.” — Michael Darcy , Chairman & CEO, DG Fuels e sheer volume Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where the SAF will be mixed with regular commercial jet fuel and supplied to customers like Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, United Air Lines and others. The Minnesota SAF Hub is the nation’s first large- scale hub dedicated to scaling the production of SAF to replace conventional jet fuel. Michael Darcy, chairman and CEO of DG Fuels, tells Site Selection that his company selected Holdrege and Moorhead because they can supply a steady stream of cellulosic biomass and natural gas. “You need a site with a labor force, and it is hard to get manpower in North Dakota,” Darcy says. “It’s easier in Moorhead. You need logistics to get the product out. That is also true for the sites we selected in Nebraska and Louisiana.” In addition to Holdrege and Moorhead, DG Fuels is pursuing plans to establish SAF factories in St. James Parish, Louisiana, and Limestone, Maine. Darcy confirmed that site selection for other locations is ongoing. “All the facilities are cookie-cutter,” says Darcy. “One of the advantages of the Moorhead site is that the flare gas will be flared off; 90% is flare gas, and the remainder is RNG [renewable natural gas]. We can send CO2 out in sequestration and back into North Dakota. That is why Moorhead is an excellent site. We can rail aviation fuel to refineries in Minnesota to feed our customers at the airport. That is a barrier in the rest of the country. Minnesota helped us with the logistics.” Decarbonizing flight is the end goal, he says. “Ninety-seven percent of the biomass carbon goes out as jet fuel,” he says of his firm’s process. “It is a carbon-neutral process. We are not feedstock limited. There is enough biomass out there to meet America’s demand for jet fuel.” Asked why his company is bullish on the Midwest, Darcy says, “The sheer volume of biomass makes the Midwest a great location for producing sustainable aviation fuel. Having a proactive state is always a good thing for a project. Minnesota on its own worked out a deal to have SAF refined there. We wish more states did that.”194 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTION According to Markets and Markets, the global SAF market was US$1 billion in 2023. It is forecast to rise to US$16.8 billion by 2030, increasing at a CAGR of 47.7% during that time. Cologix Brings Billions to Buckeyes Denver-based Cologix is a data center colocation services and interconnection company that operates a dozen cloud hubs across North America. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver house the firm’s Canadian operations, while its U.S. hubs are in Lakeland and Jacksonville, Florida; Ashburn, Virginia; Silicon Valley, California; Dallas; Des Moines; Minneapolis; New Jersey; and Columbus, Ohio. It is in the Columbus region of Central Ohio where Cologix is making its biggest bet: a recently announced $7 billion data center campus in Johnstown in Licking County. Located just 10 miles south of the exact geographic center of Ohio (a town appropriately named Centerburg), Johnstown is home to 5,350 people. Upon buildout, this small town will be home to 2 million sq. ft. of AI hyperscaling data centers spread out over 154 acres occupied by Cologix and its 800 megawatts of capacity. Cologix operates four data centers in Columbus. The new site in Johnstown will be home to eight, says Scott Schneider, chief financial officer of the company. “The most important factor for us is proximity to our existing data center campus in Columbus,” he says. “The first thing we look at is the radius around our data centers. Second is line of sight to power. Third is proximity to fiber. A data DG Fuels is investing to build 2 sustainable aviation fuel plants in the Midwest: one in Moorhead, Minnesota, and one in Holdrege, Nebraska. The firm has also announced SAF facilities in Louisiana and Maine and plans to select seven other sites across the country. Source: DG Fuels $9.2 BILLION center doesn’t do much good if you can’t move data to and from it. There are dozens of other location factors, but those are the biggest.” While Licking County has become home to other massive data centers and what will soon be Intel’s largest semiconductor manufacturing complex, Johnstown is a newbie to this field. Proximity to other data centers played a role, Schneider said. “Being close to New Albany and to Google, Amazon and Intel was instrumental in our decision,” he noted. “A lot of tech activity is there already, and we like that. Being close to these other AI hyperscalers was a factor that ultimately sealed the deal in favor of Johnstown.” Around 25 to 35 highly trained technicians and engineers will be employed full-time at each of the eight new data centers for Cologix in Johnstown, says Schneider. Grow Licking County, One Columbus, JobsOhio and American Electric Power all played pivotal roles in helping to seal the deal. Alexis Fitzsimmons, executive director of Grow Licking County, says, “Licking County is now a hot spot for data centers, as is the state of Ohio in general. Data center operators are looking to reduce their risk as much as possible. They have found that Ohio is a great fit for that.” She adds that “we have a very collaborative environment, supportive elected officials and an ability to provide the necessary infrastructure to support their growth. She noted that while Johnstown is providing a tax abatement to the project, “there are no county incentives involved.” Microsoft recently purchased several hundred acres to build $3 billion worth of data center campuses in Heath, Hebron and New Albany. Meta is expanding in Licking County as well. A high concentration of utilities including electric power, water and sewer makes Central Ohio extremely attractive to big tech companies, says Fitzsimmons. “Since 2018, we have added more than $40 billion in private capital investment, more than $800 million in annual payroll, and more than 10,000 new jobs.” For a county of 183,000 people, those are gigantic numbers and evidence that global firms building the connected world of the future love the Midwest. I t’s no secret that the nation’s vast power demands have caused a surge of innovative solutions to explore the benefits of solar, wind and a revived nuclear power sector. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), nuclear remains the largest source of clean power in the nation, generating 775 billion kilowatt- hours of electricity while avoiding the release of 471 million metric tons of carbon annually. Commercializing nuclear power operations is no simple task, as it still costs a pretty penny to construct and operate these infrastructure projects. It’s a challenge the industry is strategically navigating today as new nuclear projects come to fruition. About 25 miles west of Knoxville, the Tennessee city of Oak Ridge has solidified its place on the radar of nuclear companies looking to deploy a new fleet of renewable energy resources. This activity includes buildout of Kairos Power’s $100 million Hermes Low-Power Demonstration Reactor at the East Tennessee Technology Park in Oak Ridge, the nation’s first Gen IV reactor and first non-light-water reactor to receive approval in over 50 years. (For my interview with Kairos Power CEO Mike Laufer, see the TVA Intelligence Report on p. 97 of this issue.) It also includes Maryland-based Orano USA’s planned 750,000-sq.-ft. centrifuge uranium enrichment facility in the region. The company aims to enhance the nation’s domestic supply of nuclear fuel to decrease the current 30% import of enriched uranium to the U.S. by constructing one of America’s largest commercial facilities catered to this production. Orano is eyeing a greenfield site owned by the DOE due to its environmental considerations, a reliable power supply offered by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), strong support from the state and skilled talent pipeline. The company is waiting to receive licensing approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to put the project in motion, as NRC pre- licensing was completed in December 2024. The planned “Project Ike” facility will be vital to creating fuel to support nuclear reactors, introducing the desired percentage of uranium-235 to fuel fabricators to create the specific fuel form needed to power various types of reactors. Orano’s multi-billion- dollar investment will create 305 new Tennessee STATE SPOTLIGHT 196 JANUARY 2025 SITE SELECTION Nuclear Power Needs Met in Oak Ridge X-energy selected Oak Ridge for its first commercial advanced reactor fuel fabrication facility in North America. Image courtesy of X-energy by ALEXIS ELMORE alexis.elmore@siteselection.com SITE SELECTION JANUARY 2025 197 jobs in Roane County as operations are anticipated to begin by the early 2030s. The county and the state’s Nuclear Energy Fund will contribute a combined $10 million to support utility preparations at the 920-acre site. (For more on Orano, see the TVA Intelligence Report.) “There are several things that contribute to the attractiveness of this region for companies that are looking for a place to site their new facilities,” says Oak Ridge National Laboratory Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division Director David Pointer. “Access to research and development facilities helps, but the more important thing is access to an educated workforce that brings the skills necessary to both execute the development of those facilities and then ultimately their operations.” It is here the industry can find nuclear experts like Pointer who recognize the impact of challenges associated with widespread energy poverty. The University of Tennessee alum pushed to learn how this modern nuclear technology could benefit people like his mother who grew up in a small cabin without a reliable, modern energy source. The ability to discover and promote its safe use on a global scale was precisely the “big impact” Pointer Next >