Hotel, Grocery Store Might Be Interested in Hitching Post

Cheyenne Mayor Marian Orr says a hotel chain and a grocery store have both expressed interest in locating on the property currently occupied by what is left of the Hitching Post Inn.

But the mayor says the big stumbling block to a company locating there right now is the cost of demolishing the remaining buildings or at least removing the health threat posed by asbestos, which is a known carcinogen.

She says the current owner doesn't have the money to demolish the remaining buildings, so one possible solution might be for the city to demolish the buildings in return for part of the property. The property might be valuable to the city because it already owns property adjacent to the Hitching Post.

Mayor Orr also says it may be possible to demolish the building for less than the estimated $300,000 it would normally cost.

She says she has discussed the situation with new Fire Chief Greg Hoggatt, who told her that in Florida firefighters would sometimes reduce the cost of demolition by using abandoned buildings for training, thus destroying the existing buildings at less cost than would be the case using traditional demolition training methods.

Mayor Orr says there were people still living in the remaining buildings until recently when the owner of the property cut off the utilities and evicted the people who had been living there.

The mayor says reports that she ordered the utilities cut off aren't true adding ''I don't have the power to do that."

She says the property had become a high-crime area, with Cheyenne Police responding to 180 calls there so far this year.