Wyoming Business: WBC touts Cheyenne as smart development model

CHEYENNE — The Wyoming Business Council is spotlighting Cheyenne as a model for economic development across Wyoming.

“We use you as the example when we’re going to other communities throughout the state, to make sure they recognize that vibrancy and commitment to infrastructure is extremely important,” Tucker Fagan, CEO of the state’s economic-development arm, told Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce members recently.

Fagan explained that state economic-development efforts are only successful when local communities are successful, and Cheyenne has been very successful in attracting business expansions.

“Jobs are created on Main Street, where people are willing to invest and take a chance,” he said, not by state or federal agencies.

The state’s role, he added, is to work in partnership with local communities. Partnership with Cheyenne LEADS attracted Grobet File Co. of America Inc., an international manufacturer of precision instruments and tools that first approached the Business Council, and the Lowe’s Cos. Inc. home-improvement distribution center.

Lowe’s first approached Cheyenne LEADS, and LEADS involved the Business Council in helping put together a state work-force development package for Lowe’s, Fagan said, but he said the real deal-maker was the fact LEADS had infrastructure in place.

“If that business park hadn’t been done 10 years ago and putting the infrastructure in the business park, Lowe’s would not have come to Cheyenne,” he said.

“That took a lot of foresight, it took a lot of planning, but that’s what needs to continue for us to do something in our state.”

Grobet expands in Cheyenne

CHEYENNE — One of Cheyenne’s newest manufacturing businesses is getting bigger. Grobet File Co. of America Inc., an international manufacturer of precision equipment, instruments and tools, plans to expand manufacturing operations at its newly opened plant in the Cheyenne Business Parkway.

Grobet started in a temporary facility last summer while building a 40,000-square-foot plant to manufacture high-precision tools for the jewelry, dental and aerospace markets. Now Cheyenne will produce Grobet’s flexible shaft fractional horsepower motor line and its entire capital equipment line, including steam cleaners, plating equipment, and dust collectors for both the North American and international markets.

The expansion will add a number of administrative, technical and skilled jobs to Grobet’s current work force of 40 full-time employees in Cheyenne.

“It has been our plan from the onset to continue to broaden the manufacturing base of our operations in Cheyenne,´ said Grobet president John Canzoneri from company headquarters in Carlstadt, N.J.

Grobet is the largest manufacturer and distributor of jewelry tools worldwide. In addition to Cheyenne, Grobet File has operations in New Jersey, Georgia, Switzerland, Canada and the Dominican Republic.

UW students corner market

LARAMIE — University of Wyoming business students are learning how to invest in a volatile stock market and make money, thanks to a $50,000 grant from D.A. Davidson & Co., a regional investment firm.

Twenty students in UW business professor Tommy Stamland’s senior-level “Investment Management” course are playing the stock market this year with Davidson’s money — and doing quite well. There’s no risk, but they get to keep a portion of any profit.

Using the Davidson philosophy of a balanced, diversified portfolio, the UW students’ 22-stock portfolio was up 16 percent in January, and it was outpacing other colleges participating in Davidson’s investment program.

Davidson started the project 14 years ago to give business students an opportunity to apply finance theory to actual market transactions. The Great Falls, Mont.-based Davidson currently provides $900,000 to 18 schools in six states and added UW this year.

“The students definitely are taking the Davidson program very seriously,´ said Stamland, who has been teaching the investment course for five years but never with real investments until now.

“The Davidson program … has made it more hands-on now that we are making real investments with real money.”

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