2014 West North Central Region Forecast

While North Dakota’s booming Bakken oil and gas business gets much of the attention in this region because of the thousands of construction jobs it has created over the past few years, plenty of other interesting projects either broke ground in the past year or are on the drawing boards in the West North Central region. Omaha has gotten lots of ink in the construction press lately because of the redevelopment of its downtown area, but the city is also the beneficiary of a huge new construction project related to the new U.S. Strategic Command headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base near Bellevue, Neb., where Omaha-based KiewitPhelps won a big piece of the $524 million contract to replace the new U.S. Strategic Command headquartersnear Bellevue, Neb.. According to the Omaha World Herald, “the new 915,876-square-foot facility will replace the 55-year-old structure that houses the command responsible for the nation's nuclear arsenal, global strike and deterrence, military satellites, information warfare, missile defense, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and combating weapons of mass destruction.” Not too far east along Interstate 80, Facebook is building the first phase of a billion-dollar data center in Altoona, Iowa, that’s strategically located on a big fiber pipe for area telecommunications businesses.

Other big projects in the area include the planned new football stadium for the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings and the $272 million renovation of the Minnesota State Capital building in St. Paul, Minn.; the ongoing Ballpark Village construction project in downtown St. Louis just a foul pop away from the Cardinals’ Busch Stadium; a $541 million medical center in Fargo, N.D., that’s the largest private construction project underway in the Dakotas; and the $1.5 billion Northern Plains fertilizer plant, which McGraw-Hill Construction says will  br eak ground in 2015.

Acquisition activity in the West North Central Region. Relatively light over the past five years. Details

 ELECTRICAL WHOLESALING TOP 200 DISTRIBUTORS
WITH THEIR HEADQUARTERS IN THIS REGION

Oil & gas projects, wind farms and downtown construction in some metros power this region for these Top 200 Electrical Distributors. To learn more about them, click here.

RECENT NEW BRANCH OPENINGS IN THE WEST NORTH CENTRAL REGION

Petrochemical business in the Bakken region of North Dakota has attracted at least five new branches over the past five years. If your company has opened a new branch and would like it publicized in Electrical Wholesaling's print edition or on www.ewweb.com, please send the information (and a high-resolution photo if possible to Jim Lucy, EW's chief editor, at [email protected] .

WEST NORTH CENTRAL REGION ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTOR SALES DATA

The three biggest metropolitan areas in this region -- Minneapolis, Minn., St. Louis, Mo., and Kansas City, Mo., pump up the electrical sales potential of Minnesota and Missouri. 

EMPLOYMENT DATA FOR THE WEST NORTH CENTRAL REGION

You can use the employment data below to calculate sales potential for key customer groups by region, state and Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) by using this data and Electrical Wholesaling's 2014 Sales Multipliers. To get these multipliers and to learn how to use them, click here to get to Electrical Wholesaling 2014 Market Planning Guide. Just scroll down and search for "multipliers."