Just last month, Microsoft announced it would triple its data center footprint in Cheyenne by adding 3,200 acres of land for new projects.
That expansion is already growing, with an additional 420 acres, or an increase of about 13%, just announced.
According to an email from Microsoft and information filed with the city of Cheyenne, the company is adding two areas on top of its previously announced 3,200-acre plan.
The two areas are on opposite sides of Cheyenne, but one of them, a 385-acre parcel, is near the 3,200-acre site, which is not far from Laramie County Community College.
Microsoft in an email to Cowboy State Daily described the parcel as east of College Drive near Cheyenne Business Parkway.
On a map shared with Cowboy State Daily by Cheyenne LEADS Executive Director Betsey Hale, the parcel appears along the eastern edge of Laramie Community College.
The other parcel, roughly 35 acres, is located near the North Range Business Park, where Hale said Microsoft already operates data centers and where utility infrastructure, including a major substation, is already in place.
New Parcels Tucked Into Existing Industrial Corridors
Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins refused to comment on Microsoft’s expansion. Hale, however, told Cowboy State Daily that the 385-acre parcel sits in an area already surrounded by industrial-scale uses, including the Bison Business Park, large solar and oil-and-gas projects, and gravel pits.
“The property is surrounded by a business park and undevelopable ground bluffs which are going into a conservation easement,” she said. “And then the solar field — a huge, huge solar field — and then 5,000 acres of oil and gas.”
The proximity to existing industrial uses on the ground means a data center is one of the best use cases for the property, Hale said.
“There isn’t any residential use close to the project, other than the small county subdivision,” she said.
That particular neighborhood was notified about the project, and a meeting was held Wednesday night with landowners to discuss it, Hale added.
The meeting was not required by city regulations, but was held voluntarily by Microsoft under its community-first guidelines.
The new industrial piece at North Range Business Park, meanwhile, folds additional land into the existing data center cluster west of town, near the Walmart Distribution center and Microsoft’s original Cheyenne data center campus.
That means most of the power and infrastructure needed is already in place there.
Expansion Comes Amid Rising Data Center Debates
The two additions are on top of the 3,200-acre proposal on ranch land east and southeast of Cheyenne, much of which is associated with U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis’ family holdings.
That 3,200-acre tract has become caught up in a broader community debate about water, industrialization, and how much data center growth Cheyenne should host.
Councilman Larry Wolfe said it’s really no surprise that reaction to data centers in Cheyenne has sharpened.
“I mean, you can see them from your front porch,” he said. “That’s why I keep telling people, and I said it at the meeting the other night, it’s the difference between having them out in these, where they have been, in the North Range Business Park.”
There, he said, they haven’t felt as big and imposing.
“Now you don’t have to look very far to go around and see these just enormous construction sites,” Wolfe said. “In fact, you can buy homes where you can sit and watch the Tonka trucks moving the land and keep your kids entertained for the rest of his life, or at least, a couple of years.”
Microsoft Pushing 'Community-First Infrastructure' Message
Microsoft is trying to frame its expansion under a new “Community First Infrastructure” banner, emphasizing responsible growth and partnership with local communities, including a focus on job creation and contributions to the local tax base, according to an email message they sent to Cowboy State Daily.
The company confirmed that the 385-acre parcel is near its proposed 3,200-acre expansion, but declined to answer further questions about the additions.
It did offer the Cheyenne community an open-house forum with a variety of stations to discuss water use, energy, jobs and community investments.
On its Cheyenne data center expansion update page, Microsoft says data centers are the physical infrastructure for all the technology modern society depends upon for everyday life.
“Whenever you open an app on your phone, join a virtual classroom or meeting, snap and save photos, or play a game online, you are using a data center,” the website continued. “Local businesses, government, hospitals, and schools rely on data centers everyday to deliver goods and services to you.
"Investing in cloud infrastructure in Wyoming supports long-term digital growth and helps ensure that essential online services remain reliable and accessible.”
A Portal
Hale said Cheyenne is continuing to evolve its public process tools and told Cowboy State Daily she has only recently learned of the city’s “Connect Cheyenne” website portal, which includes a tab that lists all of the city’s incoming development projects.
Those pages reveal upcoming dates for hearings on all of Microsoft’s planned additions, though each application associated with the projects are listed with coded numbers, rather than recognizable project names.
Hale recommended using city council agendas to find the numbers to projects of interest and then using those numbers to find the information pages available for each project.
Each of the pages includes an email address to whichever planner is handling that particular application.
It’s “the clunkiest,” she acknowledged, and said she only learned of it herself last week.
“Please help people understand,” she said. “And if you want to, put my name in (the article) and say, ‘Please call Betsey, she’ll walk you through this information.’”
Hale said Microsoft also announced new transparency measures in January, something she said was spurred by the Trump administration.
“The president of the United States brought them in and said, ‘You know, we want a new corporate policy (like) community transparency,'” Hale said. “So they will now go into communities incredibly early and begin working with the communities very early and having conversations with them.”
The announcement included a pledge to end all non-disclosure agreements with local governments.
Between Microsoft’s efforts to engage with the community sooner and the city’s efforts to evolve its transparency, Hale said she hopes the public will begin to feel more in the loop.
“It’s not necessarily that the city council or city staff were trying to hide anything from the public,” Hale said. “But the city has not done a very good job of explaining how long the process takes, how many times the public can comment.”
LEADS, meanwhile, will also be making an effort to help educate people on where to find information about proposed data centers, Hale said.
“I thought both sides of the (moratorium) issue did a fabulous job,” she added. “And I want to thank everyone who participated in it and did so well. They were professional, they were respectful, they stuck to their three minutes.
"And the City Council was respectful, the mayor ran the meeting well.”
Good information from both sides was also presented, Hale said, and Cheyenne LEADS is already following up on many of the ideas and questions that surfaced.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
