Hayden Secures $5.2M Grant to Boost Economy Amid Plant Closure

Federal grant funds infrastructure for industrial park that hopes to retain, expand local businesses

The town of Hayden will receive $5.2 million in federal grant funding for a regional industrial park project that hopes to lesson impacts as the Hayden Station shutters by the end of the decade.

The U.S. Department of Commerce announced Tuesday, Aug. 9, that Hayden and neighboring Craig — another community in the shadow of a soon-to-close coal-fired power plant — would receive a total of $8.5 million that was directed toward coal communities in the American Rescue Plan.

The award to Hayden is enough to bring the planned industrial park near the Yampa Valley Regional Airport to full funding, said town manager Mathew Mendisco.

“This business park, we believe, is going to be almost like the change agent for the valley,” Mendisco said. “It’s going to give the opportunity for a lot of local businesses to expand where they may not have been able to.”

The industrial park project started as one facet of a proposal to get grant money through the Build Back Better Regional Challenge in a similar vein as a project in Sheridan, Wyoming, that helped diversify its economy, which was similarly based on extraction and tourism industries.