Five new industrial sites have been certified through the Iowa Certified Site Program, a program that its creators hope will bring economic growth to rural Iowa. These new sites, located in Forest City, Clinton, Grinnell, Waterloo and Osage, are now “project-ready” and claim to be "relatively risk-free” for new developments such as data centers or food manufacturers.
"Economic development has become more and more competitive, and more and more sophisticated," says Gov. Terry Branstad. "Companies are not willing to wait, they want to be able to move quickly."
In total, there are 16 certified sites in Iowa since the program began in 2012. The eventual goal is to have a certified site in each of Iowa’s 99 counties.
The Iowa Economic Development Authority says that to date, there has been over $490 million worth of activity on sites or parks within the program.
