Business Ready Community Grant & Loan Program

The Building Resilient Communities grant and loan program, formerly known as the Business Ready Community program, is administered by the Wyoming Business Council. The program provides financing for community planning activities and publicly owned infrastructure that serves the needs of businesses and promotes economic development within Wyoming communities. Its purpose is to help communities address barriers to growth, improve overall conditions for economic development, and advance community resilience. The program supports both infrastructure projects and planning projects, with applicants expected to connect proposed activities to identifiable economic growth barriers and demonstrate a clear economic impact. Eligible infrastructure projects may fund construction of physical structures, rehabilitation of existing structures where eligible, and other public facilities that contribute to solving a barrier to growth. A committed business may or may not be involved. Examples of eligible public infrastructure include water, sewer, roads, airports, rights of way, telecommunications, land, speculative buildings, amenities within a business park, industrial park, industrial site, or business district, landscaping, recreation facilities, educational facilities, and other physical projects supporting primary economic and educational development. Applicants are encouraged to demonstrate how the proposed infrastructure will improve overall conditions and advance economic development efforts. The program also supports planning projects. A planning project involves an applicant developing a community strategic planning process and the resulting plan, with that process and plan contributing to addressing or identifying barriers to growth. Planning projects have a maximum award of 100000 dollars and are awarded through a block grant process. The source does not provide an overall minimum or maximum award for infrastructure projects, total program funding, number of awards, or a required matching contribution. Therefore, the planning grant maximum should not be treated as the maximum award for every type of project available through the broader program. Eligible applicants include Wyoming cities, towns, counties, and joint powers boards. State and local community development organizations may assist eligible primary applicants and provide project management development under contract to the primary applicant. The Wyoming Business Council may also enter into contracts or cooperative agreements with the Eastern Shoshone Tribe and Northern Arapaho Tribe to promote the purposes of the program and fund infrastructure projects. Each application must identify the barrier to economic growth, and that barrier must also be identified in public notices. Applications need a clear plan and economic impact to be considered complete and eligible. Applicants are responsible for presenting their projects to both the Wyoming Business Council Board of Directors and the State Land and Investment Board. The program page provides an application checklist and application tutorial, but the supplied source does not reproduce the individual checklist requirements, application questions, required uploads, or detailed evaluation scoring criteria. The source indicates that the identified barrier to growth, a clear plan, and economic impact are important to application completeness and eligibility. These requirements should therefore be addressed clearly when developing a proposed project. The program operates through recurring application deadlines and subsequent board consideration. The schedule identifies February 1, June 1, September 1, and November 1 deadlines, but the Wyoming Business Council notes that the June and September deadlines are being combined to give communities additional time under new rules and guidelines and to provide additional post-application time for presentations and other program features. The supplied schedule text identifies August 1 in connection with this combined schedule. As of August 13, 2026, the next listed recurring deadline is November 1, 2026, followed by a Wyoming Business Council Board meeting in February and a State Land and Investment Board meeting in April. No separate letter of intent, concept paper, or other pre-application gating deadline is stated in the supplied material. The Wyoming Business Council lists its office at 214 West 15th Street, Cheyenne, Wyoming 82002. General contact information is 307.777.2800 and info.wbc@wyo.gov. The page also directs prospective applicants to regional directors to discuss project ideas. No individual grant contact is named in the supplied source. The page references BRC Rules effective February 27, 2026, a Wyoming Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, a Barriers to Growth Guide, project profiles, annual reports, an online grant and report management system, and current submitted projects, but no complete direct PDF URL for these resources is included in the supplied material.