By Bill McCarthy/Original Source

LARAMIE — A $100 million cleaner-coal research facility appears bound for Cheyenne.

The University of Wyoming board of trustees voted unanimously Friday to proceed with negotiations with Cheyenne LEADS, a local economic development agency, to build the High Plains Gasification-Advanced Technology Center.

Unless final negotiations stall, the cooperative project between the University and GE Energy will be located in the Cheyenne Business Parkway on the eastern side of the city off of Interstate 80. Construction is expected to take two-and-a-half years and employ about 300 people while being built, according to Bill Gern, UW vice president for research and economic development.

When in operation, the facility is expected to employ 15 workers, many with high-level technology skills, and will be used to research technologies that turn coal into natural gas to produce electricity with limited greenhouse gas emissions. Contract details still need to be worked out before mid-June, and the University’s trustees left open the option to negotiate with Campbell County economic development representatives if an agreement cannot be found.

“The community has worked for 22 years to put the infrastructure and capability in place, and now it is starting to pay off,” said Randy Bruns, president of Cheyenne LEADS. Cheyenne LEADS is a private, nonprofit organization that serves as the economic development agency for the city of Cheyenne and Laramie County.

Bruns had not seen the other proposals. He said, though, the infrastructure created for businesses in Cheyenne, including such basics as water and sewer, prepared land that can still be flexibly parceled, proximity to major highways and airports and other amenities put in place by the community’s economic development leaders all probably played a role in the selection.

The request for proposals was very detailed in asking about those amenities, he said. It’s not really possible to put a dollar figure on all that Cheyenne is offering because the value of all the amenities can’t be estimated, he added. Bruns will be part of the negotiations, and he said he expects it will focus mainly on cleaning up details.

UW President Tom Buchanan said he hopes to have a draft contract for the trustees to look at by the end of May. “It’s a bright, bright day for Cheyenne,” said Mayor Rick Kaysen.

This is an opportunity for the city to diversify its economy and attract other new businesses, he said. Dick O’Gara is president of the Wyoming Center for Business and Economic Analysis in Cheyenne.

The construction jobs will likely mean about half of another job created for each, O’Gara said. “That number is probably low.”

O’Gara had not had an opportunity Friday to fully analyze the effects, but he estimated that every dollar spent on the project means another dollar, or $2 total, in the local economy. The crucial piece for the future is the high-tech jobs, he said. “That’s the type of impact that we want to see in the long haul,” O’Gara said.

Along with the planned National Center for Atmospheric Research super computer facility, the project should help attract other technology companies and diversify the local economy.

NCAR and its managing organization, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, formed a partnership with UW, the state of Wyoming, and the University of Colorado at Boulder to build a $60 million supercomputing data center for scientific research in Cheyenne. That center is scheduled for completion by early 2011.