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Our View: Lost opportunity

The decision by Owens-Illinois officials to build the company’s new bottling plant in Colorado rather than in southeastern Wyoming is disappointing.

Nevertheless, the decision provides a valuable lesson that our community leaders and members of the Legislature need to take to heart.

For the last seven months, the Ohio-based bottling company has been trying to decide if it should build a new plant south of Cheyenne on Interstate 25 or in the Fort Collins/Windsor area. The company has a bottling contract with Anheuser-Busch, which operates a plant near Fort Collins.

Owens-Illinois officials said the reasons the Colorado site was chosen were: the site was closer to the Busch plant in Colorado, an interstate highway and rail service were nearby, and there was an abundant workforce and supply of natural gas.

Our community leaders learned that Cheyenne was not ready for the bottling plant. We didn’t have the right kind of land that provided both easy highway and rail access. The site picked south of Cheyenne would have had interstate access, but no rail service.

That’s why Progress and Prosperity II is so important to our community. The goal is to raise $2.8 million that will be used to buy land that will help bring potential businesses to our community. Our hope is that these will be manufacturing companies.

Right now, Cheyenne doesn’t have the right kind of land available. Our hope is that Progress and Prosperity II will change that.

Our legislative leaders need to realize that Wyoming needs to provide more incentives to businesses that want to locate here. While our quality of life is second to none, companies moving or expanding are looking at the bottom line and what kind of incentives are being offered.

Earlier this year, legislators failed to pass a bill that would have provided manufacturing companies with sales tax exemptions on equipment purchases. That alone would have save the bottling company between $3 million and $4 million in startup costs.

The Wyoming Legislature needs to revisit that measure next year when it convenes during a budget session.

And there needs to be some thought and discussion about whether the recently purchased Belvoir Ranch by the city of Cheyenne has any room for an industrial park with easy interstate and rail access. That land would have to be close enough so that services – water, sewer, natural gas and electricity – can be provided in a reasonable manner.

The lessons we learned from Owens-Illinois will pay off down the road when an Owens-Illinois-like company picks Cheyenne.

To former Wyoming Game and Fish Director Brent Manning, who skirted around the truth earlier this month about taking a job in Illinois. He resigned his position on Wednesday.

Mr. Manning apparently signed a contract to become the new executive director of the DuPage County Forest Preserve in Illinois three weeks ago, but told Wyoming officials he was thinking about it and would make a decision on Sept. 15.

Gov. Freudenthal should have realized something was up when Mr. Manning’s family remained in Illinois seven months after he took the Wyoming job.

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