Plumes of water vapor rising from Hayden Station in 2017. On January 4, Xcel Energy announced that it would close the facility, Unit 1 in 2027 and Unit 2 in 2028.
The city of Hayden is receiving $5.2 million in federal grants for a regional industrial park project that hopes to alleviate the effects of the Hayden Station closure by the end of the decade.
The US Department of Commerce announced Tuesday, August 9, that Hayden and neighboring Craig — another community in the shadow of a soon-to-be-closed coal-fired power plant — would receive a total of $8.5 million targeted at coal communities, according to The American Bailout Plan .
Hayden’s award is sufficient to fully fund the proposed industrial park near the Yampa Valley Regional Airport, City Manager Mathew Mendisco said.
“We believe this business park will be almost like the change agent for the valley,” Mendisco said. “It will give many local businesses the opportunity to expand where they may not have been able to.”
The industrial park project began as one facet of a proposal to receive funding through the Build Back Better Regional Challenge, similar to a project in Sheridan, Wyoming that helped diversify its economy, which was also based around the extraction and tourism industries.
The regional proposal was ultimately not selected, but Mendisco kept the project alive and shifted to funding from the US Economic Development Administration.
“We worked really hard for this,” Mendisco said. “It will centralize a lot of businesses, which will be beneficial for the entire valley.”
The grant will fund infrastructure such as roads, water and sewage on the property, which was officially incorporated into the city last week. The idea is that the packages could be ready-to-use for a company to buy or lease and then build what their company needs.
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The goal of the industrial park is to provide local businesses looking to expand their operations with an option to stay in the Yampa Valley. While attracting a new business isn’t a bad thing, Mendisco said the project is really focused on retaining and growing businesses that are already here.
“The transition from the coal in the valley is a step in the right direction for the community of Hayden to expand economically,” said Mayor Zach Wuestewald. “Since we will lose a major economic engine in the future, we must all find ways to weather the storm economically.”
Wuestewald stressed that there is still work to be done before Hayden has some future as it prepares for the closure of Hayden Station – Xcel Energy’s power plant that is scheduled to close by the end of 2028.
Facilities such as the School, Fire and Library Districts in Hayden currently receive between 55% and 65% of their funding from property taxes paid by the power plant.
“It’s going to be a big deal if we lose the tax revenue that we’re going to lose,” Wuestewald said. “There is no answer, but having some kind of blueprint is reassuring.”
The money comes from the EDA’s American Rescue Plan Economic Adjustment Assistance program, which provided $500 million in grants to communities across the country.
Mendisco called it a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” because this particular program allows for a less significant adjustment in funding on the ground. If Hayden had to fund half of the $5.2 million grant, Mendisco said the project probably wouldn’t have been possible for the city of 2,000 people.
The federal government’s $5.2 million will be supplemented by more than $700,000 in local and state funding and is estimated to create nearly 80 jobs and about $12 million in private investment.
“As I have visited communities in Northwest Colorado over the years, I have heard concerns about what the closure of coal mines and power plants will mean for their highways, schools and way of life,” U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat, said in a Funding statement.
“These federal grants will help coal communities like Craig and Hayden attract new businesses, create new jobs and diversify their local economies so they can thrive,” he continued.
Mendisco said the next step in the project is to officially purchase the land in question using funds the city has already received from the Colorado Office of Just Transition. This office was formed to help communities lose significant chunks of their economies as Colorado has set some of the most aggressive emissions reduction targets in the country.
The plan is to have the design work completed by the end of December, so the project could go out to tender sometime in January, he said.
“This project was for local business preservation and expansion,” Mendisco said. “To create more jobs here in the long term and we can invest in the future and the companies that are already here.”
To reach Dylan Anderson, call 970-871-4247 or email [email protected]
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