FORT MADISON – Fort Madison officials are borrowing $100,000 from the Great River Housing Inc. to match funds from the state to do more shoring up of the James Block building downtown.
At Tuesday’s regular Fort Madison City Council meeting, Mike Norris the executive director of Southeast Iowa Regional Planning Commission, told the council that the Trust had the resources to assist with the building.
“With the trust fund, we try to do things that have two wins at one time – a housing win and an economic development win. In this case, the housing win’s gonna be a little bit delayed, usually we invest straight into the housing, but this is a really big asset for downtown Fort Madison housing potential, but also community development potential,” Norris said.
The loan is a 10-year loan for $100,000 at 1% interest, which would cost the city $10,000 over the life of the loan.
City Manager Laura Leigois said the loan will be used to match an Iowa Economic Development Authority Downtown Catalyst grant to give the city $200,000 to shore up a wall that was collapsing on the building.
Leigois said she had talks with Building Director Doug Krogmeier and they submitted a letter to the trust asking for help in improving the building.
“We’re excited they did approve the opportunity for us to do this loan, which helps us with the budget,” Leigois said.
She said there are Tax Increment Financing (TIF) funds that could be used to make the $10,000 interest payment to the Trust and the rest would be paid back over the 10 years or earlier.
“I do know we have several things in the works working toward the next steps with the building. Now that we’ve secured this loan, we can get a contractor in to get the wall work done and hopefully have an update in the very near future about the developer or the next step,” she said.
Leigois said she has been waiting to have additional talks with the IEDA about the project, but wanted to wait until these pieces were pulled together.
Krogmeier said the city may still come up a little short to engineer’s estimates to fully shore up the wall. He also said the city may tent the roof to eliminate any future leaking that’s currently occurring there. He said they didn’t want to put money into the roof if a developer had different plans. Some temporary patching of the roof has already taken place, but some leaking it still occurring.
“We need to do something with it. We can’t just let it sit. Go ahead and tent the roof or fix the roof, but hopefully we’ll get a developer in quick.”
He said the catalyst grant was earmarked for the wall and not the roof.
“We’re just not that far yet,” Krogmeier said.
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