These are heady days for West Des Moines Mayor Steve Gaer.

First came the announcement in early June that Trader Joe’s would locate its unique brand of food and beverage retailing in the Galleria at Jordan Creek, near Jordan Creek Town Center, which still serves as the city’s testament to the tremendous growth that can be triggered by public spending for private profit.

Three weeks later, Microsoft Corp. announced that it had dusted off plans for a data center originally planned for the city, revised them to meet the constraints of a withered economy and decided to proceed with the project, which had been on hold for nearly two years.

Gaer has a city that is growing in population and jobs.

The Jordan Creek area alone accounts for between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in taxable valuation. The cost to the city was $100 million in public improvements.

“The return on your investment is incredible,” Gaer said.

And if there is a good time to replace a man who has been at the center of much of the growth, this is it, Gaer said. The city is searching for a replacement for City Manager Jeff Pomeranz, who will leave in September to become Cedar Rapids’ city manager.

The city has momentum.

“This is the best time to look for a replacement for Jeff,” Gaer said.

The Microsoft data center, combined with arrival of Trader Joe’s, a specialty grocery store wooed by many cities across the country that figure they have a lot of momentum behind them, too, is as much a good marketing image as it is a tangible example of economic development.

“It legitimizes the area for anyone who is interested in a data center location,” Gaer said.

In fact, Microsoft scaled back on its original plans by a considerable degree. In August 2008, the company said it would build a $594 million data center that would host up to 75 jobs paying an average salary of $70,000 on a 41-acre spread at what will be the northwest corner of 88th Street and Grand Avenue.

The software giant now plans a $100 million, 30,000-square-foot data center that will employ about 25 people at an average salary of $31,000. Gaer points out that current plans are for the first phase of the project.

Microsoft has agreed to a minimum property assessment of $15 million, the amount of property valuation that West Des Moines has decided will be necessary to pay for the $8 million it will spend to extend Grand Avenue from the Des Moines Area Community College technology campus to 88th Street, pave 88th between Raccoon River Drive and Booneville Road, lay conduit for fiber-optic lines, and install water mains and storm and wastewater sewer lines. The agreement expires in 19 years or when West Des Moines recovers its development costs.

If the valuation exceeds $18 million, West Des Moines will use tax increment financing to return the excess in property taxes to Microsoft.

About $3.4 million of the infrastructure funding will come from the state through a Reinvesting in Iowa’s Sound Economy grant.

The city is following a formula first used when Wells Fargo & Co. built its campus on Mills Civic Parkway in the Jordan Creek area. It also was used for the Aviva USA headquarters project and will be used on other large commercial projects, Pomeranz said.

The Microsoft data center is the attention-grabbing project for the Grand Technology Gateway, an area that will follow Grand and 105th Street. A gateway to the gateway was dedicated recently when Waukee and West Des Moines officials cut the ribbon on a bridge over Interstate 80 that connects 105th in West Des Moines and Alice’s Road in Waukee.

Gaer points out that “Grand Technology Gateway” can’t be taken from the city. It had the name trademarked after losing out on “technology corridor.”

A majority of the land lies within the 800-acre West Grand Business Park and is made up of property owned by the McKinney family, which sold Microsoft its property for slightly more than $5 million.

Gaer and Pomeranz said they have had feelers from people representing other companies interested in developing in the area, but they would not identify those companies.

It is possible that they don’t know the names of the companies. Clyde Evans, the city’s director of community and economic development, said that in the first negotiations with Microsoft, the company’s property brokers wouldn’t give their business cards to city officials and they would only use first names. During early conversations, an observant city employee did notice that one of the representatives was using a laptop computer labeled “property of Microsoft.”

West Des Moines has received $1 million in federal funds to study the development of 105th, its link to another road of the future, the Southwest Connector, which will serve commuters in Dallas, Madison, Polk and Warren counties and could provide a path from the Grand Technology Gateway to Des Moines International Airport.

Gaer said he can wait out the development, knowing that the groundwork has been laid that will lead to a prosperous future for his city and Greater Des Moines.

That future is coming fast.

Between 2003 and 2009, the city’s population grew to 51,774 from 43,292. An informal census calculation that Evans does based on residential building permits showed that the city’s unofficial population on July 1 was 58,294.

The city calculates it has a daytime population of 119,000, including shoppers and workers.

“It helps to have an economic development plan that anticipates the future … that helps attract and retain people,” Gaer said.