West North Central Regional Forecast 2013

For a region that often flies under the radar, there’s a surprisingly diverse range of big construction projects underway. As measured by construction dollars in McGraw-Hill’s Construction data, Kansas’ $783 million Flat Ridge Wind Farm tops the list. But Iowa has some big jobs underway right now, too, led by the $250 million ethanol plant in Emmetsburg and Microsoft’s $84.7 million data center in West Des Moines. And you can’t overlook the $335 million St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, in Joplin, Mo., being built to replace the facility destroyed by a tornado in 2011; the $100 million, 300,000-sq-ft Sioux Falls Event Center addition in Sioux Falls, S.D.; and more than $100 million in airport expansion projects in Wichita, Kan. Another game-changing factor in this region is all of the oil fracking development in North Dakota’s Bakken region, which some industry insiders say offers a once-in-a-career sales opportunity.