Managed Data Center Cost Reduction Funding

The Business Ready Community (BRC) grant and loan program currently provides for a data center cost reduction grant. The program is available to local governments that might want to work with a data center business. The funds are used to help buy down the cost of broadband and electricity. 

Grant amounts are based on the amount of capital investment and payroll the business will realize over five years. The business must create a match of at least 125% of the grant amount in payroll and capital expenditure with the caveat that 50% of the match will be in payroll creation. Payroll also must be greater than 150% of the county’s median wage. 

In exchange for providing these reductions in costs, the grantee shall have contracted with the business to receive direct benefits and indirect economic development benefits including: 

• A specific amount of capital investment from the business. 

• A specific minimum payroll created by the business.  

• The provision of discounted IT services to the state or the political subdivision at a price discounted from the fair market value of services.  

• An agreement with the business to repay all funds should the business not meet the aforementioned requirements and/or if the business ceases to do operations or relocates out of the political subdivision prior to five years.

Definition

“Managed Data Center” means a center whose primary purpose is the centralized repository for storage, management, and dissemination of data and information for multiple businesses. This definition does not include spaces primarily for housing office computers, including individual workstations, servers associated with workstations, or small server rooms. 

For the purposes of these rules, the Council has adopted the Uptime Institute, Inc.’s four-tiered classification approach to site power infrastructure. Projects must be similar and align with the characteristics of the tier classifications or another widely accepted metric for evaluating data centers.

The Wyoming Business Council (WBC) has developed a new Business Ready Communities (BRC) grant and loan program application effective Dec. 1, 2021. This application is better aligned with the State of Wyoming’s economic development strategy, recently adopted program rules and newly established evaluation criteria. Staff also updated the new application to clarify some questions past applicants felt were confusing.