March 18, 2024

Alliant Energy to vacate First Avenue building

Utility to combine Newton, Grinnell locations in new facility

Alliant Energy plans to vacate the First Avenue building it’s using, but the City of Newton and any economic development planners have plenty of notice. The energy supplier is currently looking to purchase land in either the Newton or Grinnell areas, where a new facility would be built to serve both Jasper and Poweshiek county service crews.

Since Alliant hasn’t purchased any land yet, it may be at least two years before the company would be able to move out of the Newton facility, located at 2800 First Ave. E. However, Alliant spokesman Justin Foss also said Alliant has notified the City of Newton of its plans to eventually vacate the building.

“These things take a while to figure out,” Foss said. “This isn’t something we need to do immediately but we need to do it within the next couple of years. Just as an act of transparency, to let everyone know what’s going on, we told the city what we’re doing.”

One of Alliant’s goals is to be able to get personnel to utility emergencies in its service area within 60 minutes. Since many drivers take their high-tech, self-contained trucks home with them or are out in the field much of the time, there is not as much of a need to have offices in all small cities within a utlity’s territory.

“The web technology and other gear a truck carries make the location of an office not as important,” he said. “But we’ve got a lot of homework left to do.”

Foss said Alliant owns the building, but leases the land, which is on the north side of First Avenue between Newton Memorial Park Cemetery and the under-construction future home of Lauterbach Buick GMC.

“We’ve still got a lot of homework to do,” Foss said.

The Alliant building is an older structure, Foss said, and it hasn’t been used to its capacity for many years. A paper sign taped to the front window details policy changes with an effective date in 2003.

The new facility will be a hub for Alliant for Jasper and Alliant service calls, but its fleet of trucks and technicians is its main presence. Foss said the company is in the process of introducing hybrid electric trucks that have a crane boom that runs off of a battery, saving valuable fuel.

The utility is also making efforts to prevent outages and quickly resolve outages and other issues, he said.

Terry Kouba, the vice president of generation operations for Alliant, said every piece of equipment and every process is constantly under review.

“We take a systematic approach to make sure we’re addressing the reliability of the distribution system, on both the gas and electricity sides, to serve homes and business with efficiency that meets our standards,” he said. “So, year after year, there is that effort going on.”

Contact Jason W. Brooks at 641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com