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succeeding. He highlighted that JLL’s busiest office at the moment is their Menlo Park site selection <br />service as companies are seeking to leave the Bay Area to locations like MN, but also new companies are <br />growing in the area and staying. Certainly good information for Minnesota as the state considers a Bay <br />Area visit. He further noted that about 75% of the projects they manage “just die”. This was very eye- <br />opening and helped us to understand why so many projects we manage often don’t provide feedback <br />after submitting to RFIs. <br /> <br />Data Center Hawk, Luke Smith <br />Data Center Hawk offers industry insights on data center site selection, facility trends, and business <br />decision-making. Luke discussed why locations like Phoenix are seeing investment, the Texas landscape, <br />and the future of non-Northern Virginia investment. An interesting trend he noted is land-banking, <br />where developers are buying up prime real estate to develop data centers in 2-3 years. At this time, they <br />are only seeing this move forward in Northern Virginia, but expect that to change. Luke noted that they <br />visit different markets each quarter and they are overdue for a Minnesota visit. We suggested a late <br />summer tour to our shovel ready site in Elk River – sometime after the PUC rules on the Google <br />proposal – and will follow-up on this visit. <br /> <br />DartPoints, Loren Long <br />DartPoints has been exploring options in Minnesota for a large-scale deployment of up to 20 micro-edge <br />data centers. Their facilities are small – just 1-5 acres – but serve as rural internet exchanges that are <br />proven to increase speeds and reduce costs of internet access. Their goal is to improve access specifically <br />in the education and healthcare sectors, and are achieving this with the help of programs like Connected <br />Nation, the federal Erate program and telecom providers. They were very pleased to meet with all FAM <br />tour participants as they are seeking to understand the overall Minnesota landscape and where to place <br />potential facilities (need at least 20,000 “sets of eyes” per facility). The follow-up is to stay in touch as <br />DartPoints seeks locations and for partners to be advocates for this project. <br /> <br />Microloan Essentials Course <br />I attended a 2-day class focusing on underwriting practices and procedures for microloans in the public <br />and non-profit sector. We focused on real case study’s involving small to medium sized businesses. There <br />were several helpful tools and resources for underwriting loans, and accessing lender risk to include a <br />standardized underwriting grid. In an effort to strengthen our microloan program, I would like to present <br />this information to the EDA at a future meeting. <br /> <br />Public Art <br />Staff met with Parks and Recreation staff to discuss possible locations to install public art. It was <br />suggested by staff to bring this topic up for discussion at the Parks and Recreation Board at their June 12, <br />2019, meeting as Public Art aligns with the Parks and Recreations master plan. <br /> <br />Minnesota Municipal Power Agency (MMPA) <br />Staff from ERMU, EDA and the county met with representatives from MMPA to explore marketing <br />efforts, the potential purchase of the county shovel ready site and potential other sites. MMPA is <br />extremely interested in locating a data center to the county site. <br /> <br />Business Award Ceremony <br />CM Westgaard and I attended the Chamber’s Business Award Ceremony in April. Five businesses were <br />honored by the Chamber: <br />Large Business of the Year: Plaisted Companies <br />