jrogstad@wyomingnews.com

CHEYENNE - The mayor and two developers have reached a verbal agreement to share the costs to build a controversial skywalk that supporters say is essential to revitalizing a blighted downtown block.

Now it's time for the City Council to look at the pact for the $1.3 million elevated walkway.

Monday, the council's Finance Committee will vote on whether to recommend approval of the contract. Regardless of the outcome, it will move to the full council for its Jan. 14 meeting.

Mayor Jack Spiker called it "the most amazing contract."

"We don't pay for it until it's completely done," he said. "Our investment is known going in, period."

The city's share is $700,000. The contract says the city will pay no more than that. The money will come from the fifth-penny economic development fund.

But there's another $200,000 in public funding going into the project: The Downtown Development Authority and the Cheyenne-Laramie County Economic Development Joint Powers Board have pledged $100,000 apiece.

Developers for the two downtown projects benefiting from the skywalk will pay $400,000 and any cost overruns.

The walkway will begin at an existing "punch out" in the downtown parking garage. This planned opening is more than 20 feet above the ground.

It will span Carey Avenue and continue down the alley of the 200 block of West Lincolnway and West 17th Street, ending at Capitol Avenue.

It will connect to the long-vacant Hynds building on the corner of West Lincolnway and Capitol, as well as a new hotel proposed for the vacant spot in the middle of that block where Wyoming Home once stood.

Building a sheltered path to parking will make the high-market rates more palatable to tenants, says a developer who wants to remodel the long-vacant Hynds building into restaurants, shops and office space.

Dave Kempf, manager of Outback Investments, the firm that bought the Hynds, says he has scrapped plans to turn the upper stories into condominiums over concerns from the state about keeping the historic integrity.

"It wasn't a battle we wanted to fight," he said.

Instead, these will be offices. The ground floor will house a restaurant and four retail shops.

If the council approves the contract, the construction plans will be submitted for the city's review within 30 days, he said.

"(The skywalk agreement) is our only hold-up," Kempf said. "We're not waiting on funding."

He says the total cost of remodeling will be $7.2 million, and the building could be open for business by March of next year.

An official from Capital Management, the firm that wants to build an extended-stay Marriott hotel, has said a safe passage for hotel guests is essential to the project. Without it, there's no interest to build it downtown.

In all, Hynds will lease 70 parking spaces a month in the city garage; the Marriott will lease 86. Spiker said this will bring in $84,000 a year in revenue.

The contract says Capital Management and Outback Investments will build the skywalk in accordance with city codes. The city will own and maintain it.

The public may use it too, Spiker said, through the accesses at the parking garage and Capitol Avenue. Other businesses on the block, north and south of the walkway, may also tap into it, though none plan to do so yet.

Hynds has been vacant since the 1980s. Then the block was dealt a blow in December 2004 when Wyoming Home furnishings store was destroyed by fire, which began in the basement of the adjacent Mary's Bake Shoppe.

Investigators say arson was the cause; a jailed suspect was set free last year after charges against him were dropped.

Wyoming Home has since relocated to a historic building next door, made famous by Tom Horn. No plans have been announced for the sliver of land still owned by bakery owner Mary Coonts. The city has a lien on this property.

Opponents to using taxpayer money to build a skywalk have been vocal; the city should pass on this offer if developers don't want to pay for a skywalk themselves, they say.

Councilman Jim Brown says at the heart of their protests, they believe the city is being blackmailed into this agreement by the Marriott and Hynds developers.

But he says the project is the right thing to do.

"I think it's necessary," Brown said. "It's one of those things where the administration is dammed if they do, dammed if they don't.

"People get upset if you don't help downtown. If you try to entice businesses, they get mad too."

A $700,000 concession isn't anything new, Brown said, adding, "It happens all the time."

He pointed out that the state pledged $21 million to NCAR to locate a supercomputer in Cheyenne.

Spiker calls the skywalk infrastructure that will aid economic development.

"The Marriott and Hynds could become a downtown anchor," he said. "It certainly can't hurt. An empty hole can't generate anything."

He said lease revenue for the Hynds is projected at $2.3 million in the first three years; the Marriott expects $6 million.

Sales tax from construction will approach $1 million. He says a low estimate for annual property taxes would be $128,250.

"If this is blackmail, then we've been robbed several times by the business parks," Spiker said.

Public funds bought the land and built the intersections, water lines and roads for the Cheyenne Business parkway and the North Range Business Park, he said.

"There is no difference here," he said. "It's all a mechanism to attract more economic development. You've got to provide infrastructure or you're not going to attract those jobs."