# Arkansas Economic Development Commission The Arkansas Economic Development Commission (AEDC) is the state agency responsible for promoting business development and investment in Arkansas. AEDC works closely with [[Entergy Arkansas]]'s economic development team to identify, attract, and accommodate large-load industrial / data-center customers — per [[Bethel Direct on JPS Industrial Load Growth|Bethel's testimony]] in the Jefferson Power Station CECPN docket. ## Roles in this corpus - AEDC is a key partner with EAL's economic development team in the recruitment of prospective large-load customers ([[Bethel Direct on JPS Industrial Load Growth]]). - AEDC is the FOIA recipient of a 2026-05-19 request from the investigation; the request **remains unanswered as of 2026-05-29** (key custodian for [[AVAIO Digital Partners|AVAIO Project Leo]] incentive / development records). - Both the [[Little Rock Port Authority]] and [[Pulaski County Government]] pointed Project Leo's incentive / development records to AEDC. - **Direct involvement in [[Project Stratus]] (Conway).** AEDC Project Manager [[Raven Johnson]] attended the **October 2, 2024 Project Stratus utilities site visit and Tupelo Bayou WWTP tour** — the corpus's first Tier-1 placement of an AEDC officer at a Conway data-center working meeting (the [[2026-05 City of Conway Produces Project Stratus Records|City of Conway production]] produced no AEDC correspondence). See [[Project Stratus Utilities Meetings and Site Visit]]. ## People - [[Raven Johnson]] — Project Manager; attended the October 2, 2024 Project Stratus utilities site visit. ## Notes This page anchors the previously-seed AEDC entry from `index.md`. Background on Commission leadership and specific economic-development programs is not in the corpus. Raven Johnson's documented presence at the Oct 2024 Project Stratus site visit is concrete evidence that AEDC holds responsive Conway data-center records — strengthening the basis for the still-outstanding AEDC FOIA, which to date has been framed mainly around AVAIO Project Leo.