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Wyoming Officials Craft Economic Plan

Hearing the call for help from across Wyoming, officials have crafted a plan that will make money available for projects that boost economic development.

The Business-Ready Communities Act sets out a grant-and- loan program that will help communities build what they need to keep companies where they are, help them expand and attract new business.

By:
Jessica Lowell
Wyoming Tribune-Eagle

You want cash? The state’s got plenty of it.

All you need to do is ask for it.

In a utopian world, economic development would be that easy.

And in that same world, Interstates 80 and 25 would be clogged with moving trucks, each waiting patiently for its turn to offload the trappings of all the companies that are dying to make Wyoming their new home.

The truth couldn’t be more different.

Across the state, communities struggle over how to attract businesses and keep workers, maintain their individuality and standards of living and keep their schools open.

In fact, Wyoming does have a little money. But it also, from its earliest days, has stood against handing out money directly to companies or individuals, except in specific circumstances. The state constitution says so.

Despite that prohibition, state government has been the source of a number of economic development programs that have made money available to companies with some pretty loose terms.

Now the state is taking a different tack. Hearing the call for help from across Wyoming, officials have crafted a plan that will make money available for projects that boost economic development.

The Business-Ready Communities Act sets out a grant-and- loan program that will help communities build what they need to keep companies where they are, help them expand and attract new business.

That’s a lot to ask of a three-year, $25 million program.

Ready to go

Wheatland, a town of about 3,500 in southern Platte County, is typical of many small towns.

Its downtown is lined with small shops, and out by Interstate 25 at the south end of town, hotels and quick-serve restaurants ring the end of the off ramp.

And northeast of town, the Laramie River Station looms, generating electricity for the Missouri River project.

Officials there can see the possibilities.

Just recently some found themselves courted by the possibility of a retail outlet mall.

"We were contacted by a consultant who said we would be perfect for that," Wheatland Area Development Corp. executive director Linda Fabian said. "And for $14,000, he would come out and tell us all about it."

She said her board declined that offer, but it prompted them to investigate the possibility themselves. As it turns out, Wheatland falls short of one very significant criterion – traffic.

The industry standard says the daily traffic count on the interstate should be 75,000 vehicles. Along that stretch of I-25, she said, the Wyoming Department of Transportation estimates the daily vehicle count at 6,000.

"I learned more about outlet malls than I ever thought I would have to," Fabian said.

But that’s not the only possibility on the hook.

Fabian said Wheatland economic developers could tap these new funds to build a spec building that the town would own and rent out to a business.

The strength of that plan is that the town would have an asset no matter what happened to the business, she said. If a business should outgrow the building or fail, the town would be able to rent it to another concern.

Fabian said her board has no specific tenant in mind.

There is a Colorado company that’s shopping for a location to move its trailer-making business, she said, and Wheatland is one of seven towns in the wooing.

If the company picked Wheatland, Fabian said, it could move into the site being vacated by the Ford dealership, which is building a new facility next door to its existing one.

The devil in the details

It’s too soon to say how the program will really work.

Steve Achter, the investment ready communities director at the Wyoming Business Council, has been working on what the rules of the program will look like.

A draft version is now making the rounds in the state among economic development officials.

The law specifies that any city, town, county can apply, and the state can strike cooperative agreements with Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes as well.

The funds will be made available in loans or grants. Specifically how the money will be distributed is part of the rules.

The law gives some guidance. Funds may pay for buying land or rights of way, building airports, installing sewer and waterlines, installing telecommunications equipment or building roads.

It also spells out some exclusions. The money can’t be used to rehabilitate or expand existing infrastructure unless the applicant can make the case that it’s needed to keep a business or smooth the way for a relocation.

There’s another significant proviso: Applicants must prove that with a grant or loan from this program, their projects would be completely funded.

"Look, we don’t want to build monuments to economic development," Achter said.

If a community wants to put up a spec building or an industrial park without a large tenant to anchor the development, Achter said, it will have to prove it has the labor force, available housing and community characteristics to support a new enterprise.

"Should this money be for planning or not? We’ve heard both sides," Business Council chief executive Tucker Fagan said. "Certainly to do a good job, there has to be planning. But then maybe the planning is the buy-in from the community."

The council is expected to have the rules drafted no later than July 1 and submitted to the Legislature’s Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Interim Committee.

Before Sept. 1, the rules must go to the Legislature’s Management Council. And by law, no applications can be accepted until at least 30 days after the rules have been submitted there.

Already going

In northwest Wyoming, Powell hasn’t been waiting for a grant or loan to kick start its economic development program.

For more than 30 years, officials in the town of about 5,300 have been working to improve the local jobs picture. They have been and still are concerned about the exodus of their youth.

Dave Reetz, president of the Powell Valley Economic Development Alliance, said even after three decades of work Powell’s biggest need is to create jobs and nurture good business growth.

And that’s after different groups have developed three business incubators, two major business parks and marshaled the center of town through a revitalization program that filled once-vacant storefronts.

"We have an incredible amount of infrastructure," Reetz said, much of it driven by the private sector, not government funding. "That’s the seed bed to grow and develop businesses."

Reetz’s approach to economic development is business-like: He is focused on the outcome.

"You have to work for results, not just activity," he said. "Activities make you feel like you are doing something, but what do you get?"

Reetz has an early draft of the rules, but he hasn’t read them yet. Even so, he knows communities are going to have to prove the need for the money.

"Communities ought to be doing assessment programs," he said. "There’s a better chance of success."

Even as ready as Powell is for business, Reetz said he still can see the need for business-ready communities money.

A 177-acre business park that combines housing, business and industrial land is now under development. Funding to put in fire hydrants would help lower development costs.

12 years later, a success

Randy Bruns is looking for land. He needs it in big tracts and not-so-big tracts.

As president of Cheyenne LEADS, the economic development corporation for Cheyenne and Laramie County, Bruns is charged with developing the Cheyenne Business Parkway, among other tasks.

Investing in hard assets seems so logical now. But about 15 years ago that’s what economic development supporters in the Cheyenne area started to do.

"It was a leap of faith," he said. "But the results are visible. It happened overnight – 12 years later."

Now that the 900-acre east Cheyenne business park is nearly full, Bruns is looking for land for a new facility. He also is shopping for sites for some of the companies he talks to regularly about expanding or moving to Laramie County.

"In hindsight, it’s a simple thing," he said.

The business park is now home to manufacturers, warehouse distribution centers, a retail store and a satellite uplink facility, among others.

Filling it took a long time because the park wasn’t always ready for immediate development. But it got a boost when a private capital campaign paid for costly sewer and water lines.

"People are starting to see that as the kind of thing they can do and have results," Bruns said.

And they are starting to change the result they are after.

"For so long we as a state have said, ‘We need (fill in the blank) jobs,’" he said. "To get those jobs, we have to shift that to say, ‘What does a company need to bring jobs here?’"

Last month Fagan traveled to New York with Gov. Dave Freudenthal on a meet-and-greet outing with site selectors, among others.

Running for office last year, Freudenthal pushed an economic development investment program that would provide $150 million over a decade.

The Legislature worked on its own program, similar to the governor’s. A series of amendments and a late-session compromise created the current $25 million, three-year program.

And in New York, Freudenthal said, he turned the tables on the site selectors.

"These are people who scout locations for businesses that want to expand or relocate," he said. "Their job in life is to take you off their list."

When Freudenthal asked them what they were looking for, they were taken aback.

"They said they were looking for community infrastructure and amenities," he said. "They are looking for a workforce that is stable and able and enjoy being where they are."

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