Wyoming looks to ‘revamp’ its economic diversification efforts

Posted 10/29/19

You can expect to see a “complete revamp” of the way that the Wyoming Business Council carries out its economic diversification efforts, Gov. Mark Gordon said Friday.

“I …

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Wyoming looks to ‘revamp’ its economic diversification efforts

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You can expect to see a “complete revamp” of the way that the Wyoming Business Council carries out its economic diversification efforts, Gov. Mark Gordon said Friday.

“I don’t want pie in the sky things, I don’t want fairy dust all over the state, what I want is hard-nosed financial consideration about ... the kind of thing that’s very important, that you can measure, that’s actually going to move our state’s economy forward,” Gordon said of the direction he gave to the Business Council earlier this year.

One of the ideas the council came up with was to refocus the Business Ready Community program. While the program has been a popular source of funding for many local projects, Gordon said the council plans to use the funds to help communities get better access to markets.

In Park County, the Business Ready Community program has been used over the past decade to help get the Sleeping Giant Ski Area back up and running, expand Gluten Free Oats in Powell and Cody Laboratories, renovate the Cody and Meeteetse rodeo grounds, construct a new headquarters for Eleutian Technology in Cody and build a new multi-purpose exhibit hall at the Park County Fairgrounds in Powell, among other projects. Last year, state officials approved $2.62 million from the program to build a 10,000 square foot conference center alongside the planned — and now delayed — Clocktower Inn on Powell’s west end.

However, in Friday remarks to local members of the Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation, Gordon indicated that the state intends to shift how it uses at least some of that money.

“The Business Ready Community program, that’s something a lot of communities really rely on, it’s a part of what we do,” Gordon said. “But we really need to focus on how we expand our markets, how we advance our commodities — particularly our agricultural commodities.”

He said the state should look beyond foreign markets in places like Taiwan and Japan to also make sure “that domestically, we build the most robust markets we can for all of our ag products.”

“How do we make sure that the organic wheat that we’re growing in Pine Bluffs has access to a railroad so that those guys aren’t sitting there with their grain in a silo because they can’t put a manifest train together?” Gordon asked rhetorically, adding, “How can we make sure that those people that are malting barley ... have access to all the craft breweries that really like what’s going in the Big Horn Basin, around Pine Bluffs and elsewhere?”

As part of the revamp of the Business Council’s efforts, Gordon said residents will be able to see the return on the state’s investment in diversification efforts.

“And it’s going to be able to not compete with what private industry does,” he said, “but to stand behind and augment and help private industry as it moves forward.”

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