Wyoming officials extend lease, securing 'critical investment' of military housing
Sep. 8—CHEYENNE — State investment was secured in an F.E. Warren Air Force Base housing project when the Wyoming Business Council approved a second extension of the lease agreement during their board meeting on Thursday.
The WBC approved an additional six months to a year for a signed lease between F.E. Warren and Coldwell Bank after negotiations with the first developer, Balfour Beatty, fell through.
Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins told the WBC Board of Directors that current negotiations between the Air Force and Coldwell Bank were going well, and he hoped to "see a positive lease by the end of this year."
"If they would have voted that down today, we would not have had those dollars," Collins told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. "I don't think this project would move forward."
The Air Force housing project was initiated in 2015, when military personnel struggled to find vacant homes within Cheyenne. Many of them were forced to find living situations 45 miles south in Fort Collins, Colorado. The Enhanced Use Lease Project involves commercial and retail construction on property owned by F.E. Warren outside of the security gates.
The property, which would be accessible to both the military and the public, is adjacent to Interstate 25 and Highway 210 (Happy Jack Road).
"We have the new Sentinel missile program coming here in the next couple of years that's going to bring a large number of more people into our community," Collins said during the meeting. "It's really going to make our housing problem even worse."
WBC also approved the city's request to amend the scope of work, which proposed constructing a gravity sewer main and eliminating the need for a new lift station. The construction of a gravity sewer main opened "more options for EUL, as far as developing goes on the sewer," Collins told the board. Adding the sewer line, the Cheyenne mayor said, would "add more land for development along Missile Drive."
There was concern in the city over whether the Air Force would relinquish ownership back to Cheyenne of the city's utilities on the developed property, or leave it to the developer.
"By going this way, we'll be able to provide all the services the EUL needs, but we'll also be able to increase capacity for our community," Collins said.
The only provision the WBC board did not approve was the request for exemption from the executed lease requirement to begin construction.
This was ultimately a cost-saving move, Collins said, for the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities to start work on water and sewer lines now, rather than wait a few months until the lease was signed, which would drive up costs of construction.
"We were kind of hoping to start the sewer and water lines now," Collins said. "It'd never be cheaper than today."
WBC board members said they were concerned about starting construction on a project that ran the risk of "going nowhere."
"If we build it and then the lease does not happen for the developer in order to do the development, then we basically run a risk of having a pipeline going to nowhere," said board member Erin Moore, CEO of Gannett Peak Technical Services.
Hannah Shields is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's state government reporter. She can be reached at 307-633-3167 or hshields@wyomingnews.com. You can follow her on X @happyfeet004.
