Business View Magazine | March 2020

334 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE MARCH 2020 transmission assets, including a 10 mile, 69 kV transmission line between the City of Springfield and the Southwestern Power Administration, as well as four substations and related infrastructure, to GridLiance, Holdco, L.P., an independent transmission company, which currently operates hundreds of miles of transmission lines and related substation facilities in Nevada, Missouri, and Oklahoma. While Nixa Utilities will continue to own the distribution lines which go into the city’s homes and businesses, it will no longer have to maintain the transmission lines which connect the city to the regional grid and power stations where electricity is generated, which, over time, will save it money on transmission costs. According to Liles, Nixa is growing at a rapid rate. “When the next census comes in, we’ll probably be closer to anywhere from 23-25,000,” he reports. “Residential growth is absolutely blowing up in our community.” “We position ourselves as one of the premier suburbs of the Springfield metro area here in southwest Missouri, and we’re trying to get aggressive about meeting our residential growth with equal commercial growth,” adds Public Information Officer, Drew Douglas. In order to accomplish that goal, the city recently entered into a collaborative partnership with the neighboring city of Ozark and Christian County to create an economic development organization called Show Me Christian County. “We were at the point of whether or not we wanted to hire our own economic development coordinator,” Liles recounts. “We realized that we would have a stronger force as a region. That way, we can promote the county as a whole, instead of as one individual city. That’s taking off and starting to gain some steam and we’re starting to see the fruits from that. A lot of things have come to the region because of that partnership. It’s been a great asset to our community.”