SUTTON — It’s come to seem almost like a Rolling Stones concert tour — another city, another cheering throng. But the star of this show is ethanol. And Sutton, a town of about 1,400 80 miles southwest of Lincoln, got its turn in the spotlight Thursday as the chosen location for a new ethanol plant.

About as quickly as community leaders and officials from Chicago-based American Ethanol finished with groundbreaking ceremonies, heavy equipment took over the serious dirt-moving work on a 115-million-gallon plant with an estimated dollar value of $150 million.

Construction at the site, about 8 miles west of Sutton near the intersection of U.S. 6 and Nebraska 14, is expected to take 18 months.

Tim Morris, based in Lincoln’s Haymarket as chief executive officer for American Ethanol’s regional headquarters, said the ethanol building boom is a sign of permanent change in the corn market.

“It used to be food and feed,” Morris said. “We’re headed toward food, feed and energy.”

American Ethanol is also headed toward a substantial presence in Nebraska. Andy Foster of the Chicago office said work should begin on a sister plant of similar size at Wahoo this year or early next year.

The company also has options on land that its management wants to use for three more plants at Grand Island, Red Cloud and Tekamah, and has started the permitting process on those with the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality.

Todd Sneller of the Nebraska Ethanol Board said the latest overall count on the state’s ethanol presence includes 12 operating plants, six of which have embarked on expansions, 10 more plants with steel in the air, and more than 30, including Sutton, at an earlier stage of development.

Carleton, south of York near the Kansas border and a company called ALTRA Nebraska await their turn next week. Groundbreaking on a 100-million-gallon plant there is scheduled for Thursday.

Sneller said American Ethanol is an example of a relatively new company that is capitalizing on intense investor interest by scheduling a series of projects for construction.

When they finish one, “they’re moving right on to the next site, following by the earth-moving equipment and the ground-compacting equipment and the construction crews.”

American Ethanol is not an example of a company pushing for partial ownership by local farmers.

“They’re all encouraged to have some local participation,” Sneller said, “but in some communities,” including Sutton, “that’s not so important as having the investment there.”

Sutton City Administrator Virg Ulmer said Thursday’s groundbreaking culminated three years of work to bring a plant to Clay County and the Sutton area.

“This is very significant,” Ulmer said. “We don’t have an opportunity in rural Nebraska very often to work on projects of this scale.”

Bill Gates’ purchase of a California ethanol plant, President Bush’s promotion of ethanol, and the 2005 passage of federal legislation mandating use of renewable fuels certainly didn’t hurt Sutton’s chances.

“When we started this three years ago, we didn’t know those things were going to happen,” Ulmer said.

Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net.