All's quiet on the northern Great Plains, with only four construction projects in the $100 million-plus category breaking ground. McGraw-Hill Construction said a $500 million ethanol plant in Hugoton, Kan., is the region's biggest project, and that Minnesota
is seeing much of the rest of the action in big projects, with the construction of a federal building in Fort Snelling, Minn.; a hotel near Minneapolis' Mall of America; and a canola processing plant in Bloomington, Minn. The continuing construction of wind farms in all of these states; a huge project in Kansas City, Mo., for the National Nuclear Security Administration and General Services Administration; a $200 million Microsoft data center nearing completion in West Des Moines, Iowa; a Yahoo data center near Omaha and some smaller projects near the city's downtown ballpark round out the major construction projects in these states.