What People Are Saying

Cheyenne Scores 5 Stars!
By Ilene Olson
Reprinted from Wyoming Tribune-Eagle

Casper and Fort Collins Communities earn four stars for quality of life.

Cheyenne Wyoming’s capital city is listed as a "Five-Star Community" for quality of life by Expansion Management magazine.

Cheyenne, Denver and Boulder/Longmont, Colo., were among the 41 communities on the five-star list, selected from 329 communities ranked. Casper and Fort Collins, Colo., were listed as four-star communities. The communities were ranked in terms of quality of life for people wishing to expand or relocate their businesses.

According to an article in the 1999 ratings issue of Expansion Management, researchers used criteria in eight "quality of life quotient" categories to rank the cities. Those categories included local crime rates, home ownership, education, comfortable living, employment opportunity, adult education and availability of airports.

The most heavily weighted category was comfortable living, or the ability of families and individuals to meet their financial needs and desires, based on income levels combined with cost of living adjustments, state and local tax burdens and area poverty levels.

Second in importance was home ownership, with primary weight given to housing affordability.

The employment opportunity was viewed through "employer-colored glasses," and considered that area’s average annual wages, unemployment rates and available labor pool.

The availability of quality labor was one of the factors that influenced Alan Thornburg and his son-in-law, Robert Parris, to expand their South Dakota-based business, Truss Craft, to Cheyenne.

"We’re located in Rapid City, and we were shipping a lot of trusses into the Denver market," Thornburg said. "That portion of our business was growing and expanding to the point where we decided we needed to take it closer to the market."

Thornburg said they looked at both Colorado and Cheyenne when deciding where to locate their second plant.

"We chose Cheyenne primarily because of the tax advantages, the price of property, and we kind of liked the smaller local community," he said. "We felt perhaps that the quality of labor here might be more conducive." They began construction on Truss Craft in October 1998, and began manufacturing wood trusses for residential and commercial roofs in April.

The result: "Every month has been more than the previous month," Thornburg said.