An Iowa-based business is looking to locate in Greene County.

Simple Mining is headquartered in Cedar Falls and they are a bitcoin, cryptocurrency mining company that has been established for five years, dealing with digital money for investments. Greene County Development Corporation Executive Director Greg Piklapp tells Raccoon Valley Radio that the business was looking for another location to house a data center and they needed available land and electric power. He explains that’s when GCDC and Ames Regional Economic Alliance (AREA) stepped in to provide help.

“We’ve run into this before, we’ve worked with this before, we’ve done this before (as AREA). We haven’t done a project of this scale before, Greene County will be the first. But also too, Greene County is also a great example of what economic development is going to do for Greene County.”

Piklapp explains that Simple Mining’s plan is to invest $12 million into the county, place 30 modular units, that are single story, one-half mile away from the nearest human occupied building on 15 acres of rural privately owned land that the company is looking to purchase, hire eight to ten employees that are ideally local with an average starting hourly wage of $20, and pay an annual amount in lieu and not being allowed to pay property taxes that the county can use how it wants. 

He points out that Simple Mining, GCDC and the potential power provider, Midland Power Cooperative, are working together with the Greene County Board of Supervisors to establish a zoning ordinance for data centers and cryptocurrency businesses, which may not be the easiest choice, but it is the better choice.

“Otherwise you’re going through the conditional use permit option which is a total option that they have available, the company didn’t want to do that. They wanted to work with the county and make sure that everything was above board and transparent. And then also to that they wanted to do it right instead of just drop it on the (Board of) Adjustment and say, ‘Hey, we want to do this,’ and then not have any guidelines for Adjustment to consider it.”

Piklapp adds that the company will not use additional water for cooling its servers and equipment, but will be needing electricity for its cooling systems, which was noted at the most recent Greene County Supervisors meeting the site has adequate supply of power and will not overload the grid. The Supervisors held a public hearing on the zoning ordinance changes and approved the first of three required readings. Piklapp says if all the readings are approved, construction could happen as early as this spring and anticipated operation could be as early as next summer.