The city of Cheyenne just got bigger, again, so another data center can be built.
The City Council voted 8-2 on third and final reading Monday night to annex Cox Ranch, a 1,260-acre agricultural site west of Roundtop Road.
The annexation first came up in April and was met with public backlash. The council then voted unanimously to postpone a final decision until September.
Monday's vote officially brought the land into the city, but not before the council heard from residents angry about how the city is hangling its data center expansion — and the council members arguing among themselves.
Rolling Hills resident Minda Blevins told the council that many residents "have totally, completely given up on you" regarding data centers.
The council also approved rezoning the land from agricultural to business park, allowing Skybox Data Centers and real estate developer ViaWest Group to proceed with plans for a data center on the site.
This adds to a ballooning number of data centers in Cheyenne. Ten are already operational, five are under construction and nine are in development.
Neither the city nor the developers have said which company would use the data center.
‘Lousy Neighbors’
Councilman Pete Laybourn has voted against data center annexations, casting the city's Public Services Committee's only vote against Microsoft's 3,500-acre expansion in June while opposing the Cox Ranch proposal at its second reading on Sept. 14.
On Monday, he flipped.
Laybourn said his concern with the Cox Ranch annexation from the start was the wash water that leaves the city's treatment plant and flows across the property to Crow Creek.
After meeting with the neighboring ranch that holds water rights and with the Cheyenne Board of Public Utilities, he said developers have committed to protecting that flow and the riparian zone.
“When we started this process and I brought that up, it wasn't taken seriously,” Laybourn said. “I think it is now. I think it should be.”
Laybourn noted that this annexation is unique because the land carries a stream made of the city's own treated water. The developers' commitment to protect it was enough to earn his yes.
'Lousy Neighbors'
The meeting turned confrontational after Councilman Lawrence Wolfe, one of two votes against the Cox Ranch annexation along with Councilman Mark Moody, accused his colleagues of plowing ahead on data center approvals before writing needed rules to govern them.
“I think it's unhealthy for a city council, given the magnitude of these issues, given the national interest in these issues, given all of the concerns we have heard, to have a monolithic view in support of data centers,” Wolfe said.
Wolfe said the developers' "commitment to the Cheyenne community" — a pledge they presented to the council in August about how they say they will operate the data center — is a positive first step but leaves the city far from where it should be.
“This agreement does certain things, mostly things that they, from the very beginning, said they were going to do anyway,” Wolfe said. “It doesn't really reflect what I think ought to be in these agreements, which is a actual negotiation between the city and the developers.”
A decision this consequential should not rest on the charm of a company's representatives, Wolfe said, even if his colleagues believe Skybox and ViaWest are better than the industry's reputation.
Those representatives may be gone long before the project is built, he said.
“We need to give much, much more thought to what our relationship ought to be with these developers, and we simply haven't done that,” Wolfe said. “While the developers can make all sorts of promises about how they operate their data center, the lived reality of the residents near data centers is that data centers are lousy neighbors.”
As a lawyer for more than 40 years, Wolfe said the city's annexation ordinances are also part of the problem. The language isn’t strong enough to put the developers’ promises on paper, he said.
"They're weak, they’re terribly weak,” Wolfe said of the annexation ordinances. “They say the same thing for every annexation.”
‘Nothing Ad Hoc’
Councilman Tom Segrave shot back with a reminder of how long Wolfe has held his seat.
“Well, after getting lectured by Councilman Wolfe, I find it ironic that he's been on council 10 months,” Segrave said. “He says we have no ordinances. We're undermining statutory criteria. We don't have any traffic requirements.
"He talks about democracy, and he's had every opportunity to bring those ordinances forward. Haven't seen them.”
For Segrave, the developers' community commitment that Wolfe said doesn't go far enough is the product of the council's decision in April to slow down and listen, and of the developers' effort to answer residents' concerns.
“This is the first development we've had that we have a community commitment agreement,” Segraves said. “Is it perfect? Probably not. Will future ones be better? I hope so.”
Segrave said he would not hold up this project over the $50 million community benefits agreement Wolfe has sought for both this annexation and the Microsoft annexation.
Annexations are not the city's initiative, but rather requests made by a property owner, which Segrave said weighed on his decision to vote yes.
“We've talked in the past about the property owner, what about their rights,” Segrave said. “We have to balance this somehow.”
Councilwoman Kathy Emmons also bristled at Wolfe’s suggestion the council has plowed ahead without a plan.
“I think that little diatribe was incredibly disrespectful to the work that we have done as a council,” Emmons said. “There’s been nothing ad hoc about this process. We’ve spent months studying this.”
Emmons said plans are already in place to protect the city's water, traffic and residents. She still voted yes, but she made a point of saying the crowd's concerns were not falling on deaf ears.
"I'm sorry,” Emmons said. “I don't like to have people be disappointed. But I also don’t know how to listen to people any more than we already have.”
‘We Are Tired’
Many of the residents who spoke Monday said they felt just as stuck, unsure how to get through to the officials they have been addressing for months.
Blevins said council members seem to believe declining participation at meetings signals growing support for data centers. She said that's not the case.
Many residents who attended every meeting have stopped because they feel the council always dismisses their concerns, she said.
“They have seen that our concerns and voices do not matter to you," Blevins said. "Frankly, we are tired, sick and tired, of showing up, speaking, emailing, and calling, only to see it fall on deaf ears.”
In less than three months, the council has added thousands of acres to the city's footprint in data center annexations alone.
Before council members voted Monday, Blevins said she believed most had already made up their minds about Cox Ranch.
Even as one of the smaller group of residents who keep showing up, she said she doesn't expect her voice to matter either.
“You will get your way tonight, and only a small number of county residents will benefit from your decisions,” Blevins said. “I might be delusional for speaking again, but I was raised to stand up when I see an injustice, and that is why I'm here tonight.”
Heather Madrid, a Cheyenne resident who has been a vocal advocate against the rapid development of data centers and filed two legal petitions against the city challenging an earlier annexation, agreed with Blevins that a collective weariness is keeping others who spoke up from coming to council meetings at all.
“Please spare me the argument or the excuse that they are scared to face their neighbors,” Madrid said. “That’s crap, and you know it. The people who have everything to lose and nothing to gain are sitting in this room week after week.
"Some of us wonder if we'll be fired for speaking up, myself included.”
Rick Kessler, who has lived next to Cox Ranch for 50 years, told the council that after they cast their votes and go home, they won’t have to face the consequences of that vote like he will.
“We don't live within the city limits,” Kessler said. “We can't vote in your elections. We have no ability to influence the power you wield over us.”
After decades of working in Cheyenne’s tourism business, Kessler said he knows what makes the area special and he doesn’t want to lose that local character for another data center.
“I've met people from all over the world, and not once has a visitor asked me where to find a data center,” Kessler said. “They come for the western experience. They come for the authenticity. They come for the heritage you're now being asked to chip away at.”
By the end of the six-hour meeting, the council and many residents had found no common ground, and Cheyenne's next data center annexation is already on the calendar.
Orchard Hills, a 162-acre annexation, is scheduled for final votes Oct. 12.
Emma Jane Jackson can be reached at emma@cowboystatedaily.com.
