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BROADBAND COMMUNITIES
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www.broadbandcommunities.com
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OCTOBER 2015
Fiber to the Unit:
Deer Ridge Apartments,
Jamestown, N.D.
This month, BroadBand Communities showcases Deer Ridge
Apartments in Jamestown, N.D. This new apartment
complex is one of the frst fber-to-the-unit deployments
in the Upper Midwest – but others are sure to follow soon.
Thanks to Rod Wolters of Dakota Central Telecom, Tom
Warren of Clearfeld and Steven Paul of IRET Properties for
their help in gathering the information for this profle.
By Masha Zager / Broadband Communities
J
amestown (aka "Te Bufalo City") is a thriving city
in North Dakota with a diverse economic base –
the kind of place people want to move to. IRET
Properties, a midwestern real estate investment trust,
had already built rental properties there, but rental
vacancy rates were still below 2 percent. As Steven Paul,
IRET's regional manager, says, "Tis showed the need
for quality housing in that market," so IRET decided to
build another multifamily property.
Deer Ridge Apartments, which opened in fall 2015
with 163 units in three buildings, is now the largest
apartment community in Jamestown. It's targeted to a
broad range of middle- to upper-income residents –
anyone from University of Jamestown students to
empty nesters – and ofers such amenities as a heated
underground garage, a game room and a ftness center.
"Te entire project is the amenities," Paul says. "Tat's
what has diferentiated us."
Once the plans for Deer Ridge Apartments got
underway, the opportunity for a new type of amenity
presented itself. Jamestown is a CLEC community
for Dakota Central Telecom (DCT), a telephone
PROPERTY OF THE MONTH
cooperative based in Carrington, N.D.,
about 40 miles from Jamestown. Over
the last few years, DCT has been
upgrading all its facilities, both in its
home territory and its CLEC territory,
and it is now 100 percent fber-based.
Because DCT's service area is
mostly rural, multiple-dwelling-unit
(MDU) buildings are relatively rare.
DCT does serve another Jamestown
MDU with fber, but that building
has copper cabling from the comm
room to the individual apartments.
As Deer Ridge was new construction,
DCT saw it as a great opportunity to
try out some new fber-to-the-home
technology that it hadn't had a chance
to use before. IRET saw a great new
amenity for its residents – an amenity
that no other service provider in
Jamestown was ofering.