Wyoming Business: Cheyenne’s growth seen in major street projects

CHEYENNE — Call it the symbol of a growing, progressive city.

Orange cones, barrels and traffic barriers have sprouted like wildflowers all over Cheyenne this summer, the result of pent-up demand for new streets and major repairs.

Community leaders are touting the street construction as a sign that Cheyenne is on the move and investing in infrastructure.

For many Cheyenne motorists, however, the construction scene has people complaining “you can’t get anywhere from anywhere.”

In a community that has two construction seasons — “Before Frontier Days” and “After Frontier Days” – the construction onslaught has caught a few of us off guard. But it’s a matter of finally moving forward with a number of projects that have been on the books for several years.

Plus, contractors are working feverishly to get some of them done by Frontier Days — or at least re-opened.

For Northern Colorado visitors, the chief bottlenecks are Dell Range Boulevard — though most of the resurfacing was done at night — and preconstruction at the intersection of Yellowstone Boulevard and Central Avenue near the west end of Dell Range, one of the state’s busiest intersections.

Trying to get around downtown is equally tough because of the Capitol Avenue reconstruction, a $4 million project that will give Wyoming’s Capital City one of the nicest downtown streets in the state — when it’s done this fall.

Other major thoroughfares under construction this summer include Interstate 25 through the heart of the city, Omaha Road, Morrie Avenue and a controversial project to put brick “calming islands” in Vandehei Avenue between Yellowstone and I-25.

Of course, to veterans of College Avenue in Fort Collins, getting around Cheyenne is still a piece of cake.

Trilegiant celebrates its 10th

CHEYENNE — When SafeCard Services first moved to Cheyenne, it was Wyoming’s first Fortune 500 company.

Since then, the credit card service center has undergone five different corporate reorganizations and its headquarters is no longer in Cheyenne. In its latest transformation, it changed its name last year to Trilegiant.

But it is still one of Cheyenne’s largest private employers, and it is still going strong after recently celebrating its 10th anniversary in its gleaming glass office building on Cheyenne’s east side.

“We’ve gone through a lot of changes,” Trilegiant’s Julie Scherr observed during one celebration. “We are part of corporate America, so it seems like everybody expects us to go through a reorganization every two years, but this community has always supported our diversity and embraced it.”

Trilegiant has 500 employees, and most of them are involved in some kind of community activity. In fact, when the company’s volunteers were asked to pose for a photo last year, they almost emptied the building.

Over the past decade the Cheyenne operation has been under parents SafeCard (1991-93), Ideon (1994-96), CUC (1996-97), Cendant (1997-2001) and Trilegiant (since July 2001).

Gene Bryan settles into Cody

CODY — Gene Bryan is settling in as the new Cody Country Chamber of Commerce director and looking forward to helping one of Wyoming’s premier tourist towns continue to grow and diversify its economy.

It’s a job that Bryan approaches with the same gusto he has demonstrated so often in the past for Cheyenne Frontier Days, the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas, the Wyoming Division of Tourism and the State Department of Commerce and later the Wyoming Business Council.

His top priority in Cody, he told the Business Report, will be to maintain existing businesses and help them expand.

“It seems like once a business starts up, we have a tendency to slap them on the back and let it go at that,” Bryan said. “There ought to be something we can do to make it more reasonable for existing businesses to survive and expand.”

If a business wants to relocate to Cody, the chamber will go after it “hook, line and sinker,” Bryan said, although he added he would discourage use of subsidies to lure potential recruits.

“We’re not interested in buying a business,” he said. “If we pay them to come here, somebody else will always be able to pay more to get them to move somewhere else. If we’re going to recruit businesses, we need to find somebody who wants to be here.”

Bryan is a pro at economic development, but he’s getting a boost in Cody.

He’s being aided by an “angel” investor that is matching community memberships in the Cody Economic Development Council dollar for dollar up to $100,000 a year.

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