Once again, Park County is looking into the possibility of a conference center.

This time, the Park County Travel Council has taken the lead on proposing a demand study to determine if there is enough support, and need, for such a place.

This comes after a discussion in the summer of 2023 when Park County Travel Council Executive Director Ryan Hauck, Cody Mayor Matt Hall and Buffalo Bill Center of the West Director of Revenue Bruce Sauers suggested to the county the possibility of turning part of the Park County Complex in Cody into a conference center.

All three said the county is missing out on many events that need at least a 500-capacity space, when the best Cody can do right now is 300.

“I think there's an opportunity we may be missing,” Sauers said at the time. “A larger capacity conference center would be beneficial to the community at large.”

The county then looked into the feasibility of that and came up with some positives and negatives as to using the complex for such a purpose. But the renewed idea of a conference center stuck.

The question now, Hauck said at a Park County Travel Council meeting Nov. 21, is “what does a standalone conference center look like? Do we have the demand?”

He said he’d been going around to different groups talking about the study, which he said would be a three-to-five-month process.

“Typically in a community, you really see the economic development board heading a project like this,” he said. “We're stepping a little bit outside of what we're, you know, traditionally seen doing with this, but I'm glad we have the ball rolling.”

Cody Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jennifer Thoma has heard the pitch more than once.

“We like this idea,” she said. “We're very supportive of it at Forward Cody, at the chamber, basically across the board.”

She just wanted to know how they can help move the process forward.

Hauck had previously reached out to a consulting company to answer just that.

HVS, a convention, sports and entertainment facilities consulting firm based in New York, provided a proposal for a market and demand study for a convention center in Cody.

Hauck said the firm would need information, including on previously published studies, site plan information, and economic and demographic information on the area.

Hauck noted they already have documents and designs from the proposed hotel and conference center in Powell which fizzled out in 2022 after being delayed for years due to financing issues and then Covid. 

Travel Council Chair John Parsons harkened back to an earlier attempt at a Cody convention center to share advice on how best to move forward. That conference center would have gone where the Cody chamber building now sits.

“This is about the third time this has gone up the flagpole, and the last time [a previous chamber president] ran with it before the public, and the community was behind it, and it failed very miserably. So I think not only do you need to get these items, but you also need to start getting the people that have influence in the community, as last time they killed it before it ever got off the ground … it was a lot of money spent with Plan One [Architects] for designs, and it was a nightmare.”

Parsons said it was a situation worth learning from.