Charles City projects praised on day of tours

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Charles City spent Tuesday, July 23, showing off to the state’s top economic development official.

Six businesses and organizations hosted Debi Durham, the director of both the Iowa Economic Development Authority and the Iowa Finance Authority, highlighting the projects and progress they are involved in.

Durham, area legislators and other state officials joined city officials and business representatives for visits to the six locations – the Sherman Creek Townhomes, the newly opened NIACC Charles City Career Center, Pure Prairie Poultry, 500 N. Grand apartments, Floyd County Medical Center and Carrie Lane Place.

• CARRIE LANE PLACE is a 40-unit affordable housing project being developed by Commonwealth Development Corp. of Wisconsin, on land near the Southwest Development Park, where a groundbreaking ceremony was held to cap the day’s activities.

The Iowa Finance Authority announced earlier this month that the city had been awarded $2.1 million in funding toward the construction of the project because of the city’s designation as an Iowa Thriving Community.

Tyler Sheeran, vice president of development for Commonwealth, said the company is planning to start construction early next year, to be completed about a year later.

The project is being built on land that was owned by the Charles City Area Development Corp. and given to the city for housing. The city will extend 13th Street from Corporate Drive and give Commonwealth the several acres needed for the project, then hopefully develop further housing on the property.

Sheeran said Commonwealth has an active presence in 24 states with 127 projects completed to date.

He thanked Durham and the Iowa Finance Authority, saying without the funding the project would not have been feasible.

He also thanked the housing “champions” on the city Thriving Community Committee – Mayor Dean Andrews, Emily Garden, City Administrator Steve Diers, Area Development Corp. CEO Tim Fox and Charles City Housing & Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Katie Nolte.

“Without the Thriving Community designation this wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have the Iowa Finance Authority backing you,” Sheeran said.

Durham thanked Sheeran, saying that without developers that are “willing to step up,” the programs wouldn’t work.

“More important I would say than almost anything else we do, is we’re building communities in which people want to live. Iowa needs to grow our population, and that begins with housing,” Durham said.

“Today we have had the most incredible day,” she said, starting out looking at market rate executive-style condos, then seeing an industry that’s doing major expansion and growing and investing in the community.

“We saw the incredible expansion at your hospital and all the specialty care that they’re doing for a community your size, and birthing babies there, which we need to do more of. …. It’s just incredible,” she said.

“And then we got to go to the middle school and see how incredible that space is going to be with all the characteristics of that, and then of course we see this, and it really is, as Tim (Fox) said, and you heard me say it before, that it’s really housing for all,” Durham said.

“Anyone who is good enough to work in our community should be good enough to live in our communities with dignity,” she said. “And so that’s what I love about the job we have is we get to cover the whole continuum.”

Highlights from the other stops during the day included:

• SHERMAN CREEK TOWNHOMES, a nine-unit executive-style townhouse development nearing completion, developed by the Paul Rottinghaus family’s Carlinda Limited Partnership, which held a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

David Rottinghaus said, “Housing is in a crisis in rural America. This is our first opportunity to combat the housing crisis and retain our population and hopefully increase our population of Charles City.”

He said the townhouses were a couple of months away from being finished, would each have just over 1,700 square feet of livable space on two floors with four bedrooms and 3½ baths, and include a basement and two-stall garage.

“We’re hoping to attract not only professionals, but families, to have enough space for their children,” Rottinghaus said, adding that green space across the street was also part of the project, and might be a good spot for them to add a playground.

• NIACC CAREER CENTER, which hosted a lunch for the group and offered a tour of the expanded facilities.

The Career Center will start offering career training this school year to high school students from Charles City and six other area schools in four career paths identified by the state as being in demand: advanced manufacturing, construction trades, information technology and health care.

Efforts are also in the works to offer training in some of those areas to adults in the afternoons when the high school students aren’t using the facilities.

During remarks after lunch, Durham said there is a lot of good building and development going on in the state, but “the thing that is holding us back right now is really population. We have slow population growth. We have an aging population.”

Talking about the Carrie Lane Place housing project, Durham said there is often pushback against low income housing. The arguments are usually disguised as concerns about parking.

“What they’re really saying is ‘we don’t want those people here,’” she said.

But when you put a face on “those people,” they are pharmacy techs, nursing aides, teacher aides, grocery store clerks – many of the people who kept the economy going during the pandemic, she said.

“When you became a Thriving Community it’s really because you made that commitment that we’re going to do housing for all, and we’re very excited about that,” she said.

• PURE PRAIRIE POULTRY, which this week held a ribbon-cutting for its new employee wellness and office space.

President and CEO Brian Roelofs said when the company purchased the chicken processing facility on Main Street in bankruptcy court, some of the first things it noticed were the lack of a refrigerated distribution center so it could efficiently sort and store its products for shipment, and the lack of any real employee welfare space.

The company built a 12,000-square foot distribution center, and is just finishing completion of another addition to the front of the building for administrative and executive office space, a huge, open employee break room and training facilities. It is also creating men’s and women’s locker rooms so employees can safely store personal belongings while they work.

• 500 NORTH GRAND, where developer Shawn Foutch gave the group a tour of the work done so far and his vision for 40 market-rate apartments being built in the former middle school building.

Foutch, co-owner of JMAE LLC, said the former Charles City Middle School is in the best physical condition of any of the dozen similar projects he has done, converting former school facilities into apartments.

One problem with the building being in such good shape is the State Historic Preservation Office and the National Park Service love the building so much that they are being exceptionally picky about what changes they are allowing Foutch to make, he said, and that has slowed needed funding.

The demolition of some interior walls and drop ceilings is pretty much complete, he said, adding, “We’ve removed almost everything that we need to get rid of.”

The 40 units will range from studio apartments to three bedrooms, will have high ceilings, hardwood cabinets, granite countertops, and an average of just under 1,000 square feet. Also available with be a fitness center, a meeting room and access to the auditorium.

“When we’re done with the school it will still look like a school from the outside. It will still look like a school from the hallways, but as soon as you walk into an apartment, you walk through the historic classroom door and then all of a sudden it looks like an apartment.

Shawn said the holdup at this point is historic tax credits, that have been applied for but that the state and federal departments are moving slowly on “because they love this building so much.”

Durham promised to see what she could do to hurry the state approval.

Foutch said the entire project will be about $7.6 million, which includes $2.4 million in combined state and federal historic tax credits, $1.1 million from his own funds, $500,000 in grayfield funding, and $3.6 million in long term financing.

“That’s kind of a standard formula for how we try and pull these together,” he said.

• FLOYD COUNTY MEDICAL CENTER, which has started a $40 million construction project relocating the Medical Center Clinic to be part of the hospital and expanding and renovating space for both.

CEO Dawnett Willis gave the group a tour, including the new radiology department and emergency department entrance, and discussed the plans for the major expansion project, creating a four-story (three floors and finished basement) addition that will include the clinic and other spaces, renovating the entrance and making other major renovations.

Willis also talked about the Medical Center’s success in adding new care providers.

The FCMC expansion plans have been covered extensively in previous Press articles.