-Messenger photo by Bill Shea
Assistant City Manager Ryan Maehl explains how a room in the basement of the Municipal Building will be reconfigured to become the center hub of the Fort Dodge Fiber broadband network. The City Council hired Woodruff Construction of Fort Dodge to do the needed work.

A basement area in the Municipal Building where city employees once worked on water meters will become the nerve center of the new Fort Dodge Fiber broadband system.

The City Council on Monday hired Woodruff Construction, of Fort Dodge, to do the needed renovations at a cost of $726,004.

Assistant City Manager Ryan Maehl said renovations will begin as soon as contracts are signed. The work is to be done by July 1.

The work will include removing some existing walls, building new walls, installing insulation and paneling and putting in lights.

The area will be divided into two rooms, one of which will house racks of network servers.

“That’s the brains of the system,” Maehl said.

He said the area will have “strong security systems.”

No one will be regularly working down in the server area. Maehl said the systems will be monitored by employees working in offices upstairs.

Fort Dodge Fiber will be capable of bringing fiber optic cable to every address in the city. Design of the system is about 90 percent complete. Construction is expected to begin in mid-summer. City officials hope to serve the first customers late this year.

The process of creating Fort Dodge Fiber began in November 2019 during a referendum when voters gave the city government the power to explore setting up such a utility.