GREELEY'S WORST-CASE TURNAROUND.

• Author: PETERSON, ERIC
• Position: Greeley, Colorado

A WORST-CASE SCENARIO BEGAN TO TUG AT THE MIND OF GREELEY MAYOR JERRY WONES LAST WINNER. HEWLETT-PACKARD ANNOUNCED in January it was going to consolidate its operations in Northern Colorado and close its Greeley campus by 2002, translerring 640 well-paid employees to Fort Collins. Meanwhile, the centerpiece of Greeley's economy, the ConAgra Beef Companies, was shopping for a new corporate headquarters. To the dismay of Wones and many of his fellow citizens, their hometown didn't look like it was at the top of ConAgra's shopping list. Loveland, 25 miles west, was rumored to be the frontrunner. If ConAgra left Greeley, it would take at least 550 headquarters jobs with it. Wones' worst-case thoughts revolved around a job-loss recession, even as the rest of Colorado enjoyed its lowest unemployment rates ever.

Greeley couldn't afford to simply watch ConAgra move away.

So Wones started something. Although ConAgra officials say now it would have been difficult to move the company entirely out of Greeley, many of the city's business leaders laud the mayor's persistence in corralling ConAgra before it could be tempted to stray "We tried to convince them that Greeley had a lot to offer," Wones said, "and to make them an attractive proposition. First of all, you've got to make them stop and listen to your offer -- and then your offer's got to be good." The city's offer was very good: an incentive package totaling more than $2 million in tax and permit rebates over the next 16 years, plus, and perhaps more importantly, an 80 percent discount on a lease of 1,000 acre feet of water for use at the company's feedlots in nearby Gilcrest and Kuner.

ConAgra took the deal, announcing plans in early July to build a new headquarters in west Greeley's Promontory Point, a new business park. The food giant broke ground in September, and hopes to cut the ribbon on a new 100,000-square-foot facility in July.

Meanwhile, Wones' worst-case vision of recession has turned into projections of new growth. "I would think somewhere down the road, maybe 20 years, (Promontory) might look something like the Denver Tech Center," the mayor said. That southeast metro Denver business complex has faced its own stops and starts on the road to development, but saving ConAgra for Greeley will no doubt go down as pivotal to its new Promontory Point.

ConAgra Beef's history in Greeley dates back to 1987, when Omaha-based ConAgra Inc. acquired Monfort Inc. and absorbed Monfort's beef and...