We’re thankful for region’s bright future

This Thanksgiving, Jamestown has much to be grateful for.

In much of the U.S., jobs can be hard to find. Here on the North Dakota prairie, we have enjoyed the lowest unemployment rate of all the states thanks to the oil boom out west and other economic factors.

This has led many of our employers to seek workers from out of state — bringing in fresh faces and reversing a long downward trend in North Dakota’s population.

We’re thankful for our new neighbors and the many expected to come.

According to the 2012 North Dakota Statewide Housing Needs Assessment, this city should expect another thousand residents by 2020 and another 700 by 2025.

On top of that, there are big things happening in the Spiritwood Energy Park. The Spiritwood Nitrogen Project plan would build a $1.2 billion fertilizer plant near here to go online in 2016 and Great River Energy says it will bring its Spiritwood Station coal-fired plant online in January 2015. Also, construction is expected to start next year on the Dakota Spirit AgEnergy ethanol plant, if the Environmental Protection Agency approves its renewable fuels standards permit.

These developments will bring more people here, and those people will need housing, food, education and many other needs. That means developers must build more homes, grocers and restaurants must be ready for greater demand and schools must prepare for larger classes.

It will be a challenge to meet those needs, but these are wonderful problems to have at a time when so much of the nation is still slogging its way through what has become known as the Great Recession.

We are thankful for the bright future we see for our city and our state.

Happy Thanksgiving.

(Editorials are the opinion of Jamestown Sun management and the newspaper’s editorial board)

Tags: opinion, editorials