Development group sets sights on certified site

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Economic development can be fiercely competitive, so people in the business of pursuing business say they need to have every tool available in their belt.

In this area, one such tool should be a state-certified development site, according to Tim Fox, executive director of the Charles City Area Development Corp.

Fox said the idea of having locations ready for interested businesses to move into has been around for decades, but just recently the CCADC has started more aggressively working toward acquiring property that would be able to meet the qualifications of the Iowa Certified Sites Program.

There are currently 19 such sites in Iowa, including in Osage, Mason City and Forest City in this area. The most recent site was certified in Dubuque in November.

The CCADC may not be able to have a site ready to become No. 20, Fox said in an interview last week, but it would like to begin the certification process in the next couple of years.

Having a certified cite “eliminates the risk for a company looking at Charles City or Floyd County,” Fox said.

“The reason why it’s important is because rather than site selectors looking at 950 different communities (across the state) they’re going to look at the 19 sites because they know that they should be able to find a good fit for their client,” he said.

Fox said the state knows what is available in the area and doesn’t bother pointing a prospective business in this direction if it knows there isn’t a suitable site.

“We do miss out on leads from the Iowa Economic Development Authority because we don’t have enough acreage,” he said.

Iowa has enrollment deadlines to begin the site certification process, Fox said. “The next one is Jan. 18, 2018. We’re not going to make that one, so we shoot for 2019.”

There are four size classifications in the Iowa certification process, ranging from 50 acres to more than 1,000 acres.

“We’re looking at a general industrial site, which is between 50 and 100 acres, or 100-plus acres,” Fox said. A general industrial park would be at least 100 acres total, with at least one site in the park of at least 50 acres.

The CCADC is currently looking at 15 locations, all spread along the Avenue of the Saints or close to the Avenue of the Saints, he said.

“One of the things you need to have is road infrastructure,” Fox said, so being located along or near the avenue “makes the most sense to us.”

He said there were specific properties among the 15 that were at the top of the list, but he declined to identify any of them.

“We don’t need the price to go up,” he said.

Fox said purchase negotiations have not started on any of the properties, but he agreed that the price could be in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, depending on many factors.

Mark Kuhn, a Floyd County supervisor who was at a meeting where the certification process was discussed, said at a recent supervisors meeting that the cost of land acquisition and infrastructure improvements could be around $3 million.

Tax increment financing — TIF — is the likely source of development money.

“It’s about the only tool we have left” for financing, Fox said.

TIF uses part of the additional property taxes generated by economic development in a district to fund development costs.

Using TIF means the city, county and school districts that would usually benefit from that increased property tax revenue will have to wait a period of time — currently set at a maximum of 20 years in Iowa — before they see the full benefit.

But proponents of TIF say in the end all the taxing bodies win, because without the TIF the development might not have occurred and the extra property taxes wouldn’t have come along anyway.

To be certified by the state, a property must meet a list of qualifications. It needs a clear title. Geotechnical, civil engineering, threatened and endangered species, historical and archaeological studies need to be completed. The site must be surveyed and have the appropriate zoning.

It must be near suitable road infrastructure and meet electric, natural gas, water, sewer and telecommunication minimum requirements, or have a commitment that those utilities can be put into place within 6 months, including commitments for who would initially pay to put them in.

For the water and sewer it would be the city making that commitment, Fox said. For electricity and natural gas it would be MidAmerican. The telecommunications would depend on where the site is located.

Fox said he would like to have a decision made on a particular property within six months. The decision which property to go after would be made by the CCADC, the city and the county.

The CCADC had looked at trying to get the Oliver Development Park in Charles City state-certified. It met most of the requirements, Fox said, “but what stopped the process was the remediation costs, because it had environmental contamination.”

Once the area has a state-certified site it can begin to market it, he said.

One challenge for new or growing industry in the area is available employees.

“We’re looking to attract additional workers,” Fox said. “We realize that as we go forward to develop an industrial park that may take 20 years to develop that hopefully we’re going to add some housing.

“Whether that’s single-family residential or work force complex or both, is really for the market to decide,” he said.

“We need some housing initiatives to attract and retain workers and there’s a lot of concern that a lot of workers that work in Charles City don’t work in Charles City,” he said.

The latest laborshed study shows that 36 percent of the people who work in Floyd County commute from outside the county, he said.

“Housing is a significant factor now,” Fox said. “We can’t have the same number of houses with smaller families and expect to grow population. That just doesn’t make any sense.”