Council approves housing feasibility study

A housing feasibility study in Creston is one step closer to being completed after the Creston City Council unanimously approved contributing $3,000 toward paying for the study at Tuesday’s meeting.

Union County Development Association Executive Director Wayne Pantini presented the council with a quote of $12,500 from JEO Consulting Group to conduct a housing feasibility study for Creston.

The need for this study arose as Pantini contacted several developers to look at building apartments in Creston. Pantini said several of those developers asked if he had a housing study done and what information he could send them.

“It’s (apartment housing) something that’s a huge demand for the area,” Pantini said. “We can pull a lot of stuff from the Census Bureau and some other resources and provide that to them, but they really want to see a little bit more detailed information.”

Completing the housing feasibility study could kickstart solving a long-burning issue in Creston – what to do with the Lincoln School building.

“Do you see this study as being helpful like in the case of the Lincoln School?” asked Ward 2 Councilman Rich Madison. “It would be good to get that one going.”

“I do, actually. I know Mike (Taylor) has talked with some folks and I have too, but we can’t really show them concrete demand,” Pantini said. “We have a lot of anecdotal stuff we can tell them from hearsay, but we don’t really have anything that’s valid. It would be a tool we could use to go out and try to get a developer for that school.”

The study

Pantini contacted Southern Iowa Council of Governments (SICOG) about conducting the study, but SICOG recommended he go elsewhere in order to get more detailed information about the demand for housing.

Maxfield Research, based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, quoted a price of $25-30,000 for its study. But, Pantini said, JEO Consulting Group has conducted studies for Chariton, Webster City and Council Bluffs and quoted half the price.

“They provided me a sample of the study they did in Chariton, which is pretty extensive,” Pantini said. “They went into not only the supply side, but provided some really good data on the demand side, as well. They also addressed single-family and multiple-family housing in there. I felt really comfortable with that.”

UCDA Board of Trustees is contributing $5,000 toward paying for the study to be done, and Pantini asked the city council for an additional $3,000. Pantini said the remainder of the cost will go out to investors.

The study will show the existing stock of housing in Creston and its current condition, but will also take information gathered from focus groups to show the demand for housing.

Pantini noted he has potential projects in the pipeline, but he needs the concrete data to be able to show developers in order to move forward.

“It’s a small investment. It isn’t budgeted, but I think we should do it,” said Mike Taylor, city administrator. “We shouldn’t be so tight; we should be able to do that. I really think we should do it. We’ll all have a copy of it for when people come in to see Wayne or whoever.”

Once Pantini gives JEO Consulting Group approval to begin the study, it will likely take JEO about two weeks to get started and then between 60 and 90 days to have the actual study completed.

West Adams Street reconstruction

Also during Tuesday’s city council meeting, the council unanimously approved a bid of $266,840.49 from Feldhacker Contracting in Creston for the West Adams Street reconstruction project.

The engineer’s estimate for the project was $271,755.50.

Austin Smith of Garden and Associates reported he received two bids under the engineer’s estimate, with Feldhacker Contracting being the low bid for the project, which will convert the Y-intersection at Lake Shore Drive and West Adams Street into a T-intersection and continue reconstruction of West Adams Street up to Park Street.

“We’ll most likely have the contracts back in April,” Smith said. “Theoretically, it could start as soon as the folks at the bridge are out of the way.”

Kevin Kruse, Public Works director, said paving of the east half of the bridge on West Adams Street could begin in the next two weeks.

Smith said there are 40 working days built into the West Adams Street reconstruction project.