If all goes according to plan, Powell could get its first charging station for electric vehicles in the coming months.

Zane and Joni Bennett are working to open a new coffee hut on the city’s west end by spring and they plan to include a level 2 charger for EVs. They hope to have their Charge & Brew open by the end of March in the Gateway West Business Park.

With no charging stations currently available to the public in Powell and only three in Cody, the Bennetts see an opportunity. Although electric-powered vehicles remain relatively rare in northwest Wyoming, they’re becoming increasingly common among the many visitors to Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding area.

Zane Bennett said they are intentionally starting small, with just the one potential charger.

“I can’t go into debt up to my eyeballs for a, ‘Well, maybe,’” he laughed in a Monday interview. “It’s a good idea on paper, but I gotta test the waters with a small one to begin with and see if it draws any interest, and then go from there.”

The Charge & Brew hut will be larger than a typical kiosk, with room for a couple people to sit inside (potentially while they’re waiting for their car to charge) and a restroom, Zane Bennett said. Part of the hope is to draw customers from those visiting the nearby Rocky Mountain Car Wash and Club Dauntless gym.

“We get a lot of people asking us about it,” he said.

The business will sit on a small parcel of land that the Bennetts acquired from the City of Powell last year. It’s located near the entrance to the business park, on Gateway Drive.

Getting sewer service to the lot will require extending a sewer main along a pair of vacant lots to the north and then traveling underneath the street. The Bennetts are paying for the line extension. As part of Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality requirements, the city council had to formally agree to extend the main, which it did on Jan. 2.

“We’re glad to see this happening, because a main line is the right way to do it,” City Administrator Zack Thorington said at the meeting.

In conversations with the Bennetts, “there was some reminding of why the lot was so cheap — [it] didn’t have any utilities, do them yourself,” he said. 

The council sold the 0.64-acre lot to the Bennetts for $32,000 in December 2022, which was $8,000 less than the appraised value. The council offered a nearby 0.66-acre parcel to Yellowstone Motors for the same price.

Both parcels were originally intended to serve as green space for the business park, but the city decided it would be better to put the land in private hands. The council agreed to sell the land at a discount because of the economic benefits the new business ventures are expected to bring.

The Bennetts closed on their parcel in February 2023, while Yellowstone Motors provided the necessary paperwork and earnest money last month. Records show Yellowstone Motors CEO Anthony Brownlee is purchasing the property through a limited liability company called NSC Powell.

Brownlee told the council in late 2022 that he planned to offer a new line of electric Hummers on the property.