News Archive

PCDC GO! DREAM grants are helping spruce up buildings and add new living spaces throughout Phelps County.A new downtown living space above Sweeney Wealth Management will soon be available to rent with help from a PCDC GO! DREAM First Impression / Exterior Improvement grant. The grant helped fund new windows...Continue Reading

“Phelps County is Feeding & Fueling America” is the theme of PCDC’s Annual Investors Meeting on Wednesday, March 19, at the Holdrege Country Club.All PCDC investors and community elected officials are welcome to attend the meeting. It is an opportunity to learn more about PCDC's activities in the past year...Continue Reading

The Russell and Deanna Henderson family is one of the newest families to move to Holdrege with the help of PCDC down payment assistance grants, which were expanded last summer.Russell Henderson accepted the position of campus pastor at Holdrege’s New Life Church on Memorial Day 2024. The Hendersons, who were...Continue Reading

DG Fuels will soon open a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production facility in Phelps, Nebraska – its first SAF plant in the Midwest. The expansion into Phelps reflects the role that agriculture plays in the future of aviation. Farmers who have called Nebraska home for generations are now at the...Continue Reading

Residents and visitors driving through downtown Holdrege will notice a beautiful new mural on the Rite Way Milk building. Affectionately called The Mailbox, it was painted by Wyoming-based artist Dan Toro, whose designs stood out against 130 applicants from more than 30 states (and multiple countries). The mural provides a...Continue Reading

The Nebraska Department of Economic Development (DED) is now accepting nominations for the 2025 Showcase Community Award. The award will be presented to a Nebraska community during Community Development Month (April 2025).The Showcase Community Award recognizes communities that have successfully identified community development goals; combined local, state, and federal resources...Continue Reading

President Donald Trump’s 10% additional tariffs on Chinese imports went into effect Tuesday, threatening to make several key categories of goods more expensive from the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese products brought into the U.S. every year.Key FactsThe U.S. imported $426.9 billion worth of Chinese goods in...Continue Reading

The United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is announcing the resumption of cattle and bison imports from Mexico. Imports are scheduled to resume within the next several days.To protect U.S. livestock and other animals, APHIS halted shipments of Mexican cattle and bison in November...Continue Reading

Lieutenant Governor Joe Kelly awarded prizes to three teams of aspiring college entrepreneurs through the 2nd Annual Nebraska Governor’s New Venture Competition. Awardees were announced during Thursday’s Nebraska Business Hall of Fame banquet at the Lincoln Marriott Cornhusker Hotel. Ten teams were selected as semi-finalists. The winners, prize amounts, and...Continue Reading

Native Nicaraguans Argentina Espinoza and Magdiel “Junior” Garcia, Jr. first arrived in Nebraska during the middle of winter. Yet their strongest initial impression of the state wasn’t the cold weather but the warmth and welcome of the people. Even with the ground blanketed in snow, Nebraska felt familiar due to...Continue Reading

Blending hard infrastructure information with talent metrics shows where tech reigns supreme — and where it’s spilling over to next.What if you could marry the most granular tech infrastructure data with tech talent metrics and corporate facility project numbers from tech-aligned industry sectors such as software development, data centers and...Continue Reading

The digital world is evolving at breakneck speed, yet many data centers are struggling to keep up due to aging infrastructure. According to the Uptime Institute, 55 percent of data centers are over a decade old, and nearly 25 percent are older than 15 years. With such a significant portion...Continue Reading

Business growth at Turner Body Shop in downtown Holdrege has caused cramped spaces for its staff. Now, thanks to grants from PCDC, the local body shop is expanding.PCDC awarded Turner a Business and Franchise grant to help construct a new 60 x 60 building on the lot behind the business...Continue Reading

The new Dairy Queen location at 924 Burlington Street in Holdrege, which officially opened on October 14, has quickly proven to be a bustling hub for the community. The numbers tell a story of immediate success. Co-owner Stacey Johnson said on the first day at the new location, Dairy Queen served...Continue Reading

In an effort to foster transparency and keep the community informed, PCDC has unveiled a dedicated webpage for updates on the DG Fuels sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plant project. The new resource, available at PhelpsCountyNE.com, is designed to serve as a central hub for news, progress updates, and information related...Continue Reading

“Georgia On My Mind” may be the official state song of the Peach State, but it might as well be the anthem of site selection consultants.In our annual Site Selectors Survey, the Peach State wracked up the most votes to dethrone last year’s winner, Texas, for Best Business Climate in...Continue Reading

The rankings on these pages are high-level measures of states’ workforce development climates. They do not reflect which states in a region have the most effective workforce training programs or labor boards or tools for connecting job seekers with potential employment opportunities. Rather they recognize states that performed well in...Continue Reading

Well, it’s been quite a year. And as far as state economic development policies and news go, it’s about to be quite another year.Looking back and looking forward, among the themes to emerge across the 50 state legislatures are workforce housing, streamlining of permitting, child care, infrastructure and shovel-ready site...Continue Reading

From construction to healthcare to hospitality, the U.S. is grappling with a labor shortage, with 8.2 million job openings and only 7.2 million unemployed workers, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.The post-pandemic labor landscape has seen a decline in participation in the workforce, prompting many to re-evaluate their career...Continue Reading

A saturated market presents business owners with unique challenges. It can be difficult for new businesses to break into a saturated market or for well-established businesses to increase their revenue. However, with SEO-driven content marketing strategies, you can capture more market share and add to your existing customer base.What is...Continue Reading

As the world grows increasingly reliant on technology, the United States faces an urgent challenge: breaking China’s dominance in the rare earth supply chain. Rare earth elements (REEs)—critical components in electric vehicles (EVs), wind turbines, and defense technologies—are abundant in the Earth's crust but notoriously difficult to mine and process...Continue Reading

Community collaboration is the genesis of many economic development organizations, but partnership efforts often stall at the regional level. Results-driven EDOs need to work through the barriers funding and geographic boundaries can present to drive returns. Forming strategic alliances with other groups, agencies, or local governments maximizes resources, allows for...Continue Reading

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the final approximately $300 million in assistance to distressed direct and guaranteed farm loan borrowers under Section 22006 of the Inflation Reduction Act. Over the past two years, USDA acted swiftly to assist distressed borrowers in retaining their land and continuing their agricultural...Continue Reading

More than 300 people packed the Phelps County Ag Center on Dec. 17 to learn details about DG Fuels’ plans to build a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plant in the county.The $5 billion project, which will convert corn stover into SAF, would create 640 jobs and provide $140 million in...Continue Reading