Developer building spec house in MP

BY KARYN SPORY

Mt. Pleasant News

When one goes down, another comes up. That?s been a theme in Mt. Pleasant?s housing market for some time, and is holding true today.

?That?s the ideal,? said Building and Zoning Director Jack Swarm. ?It?s harder to get new houses built in, what I?ll call old town, the established areas because of the older houses surrounding them.?

But building new in the older neighborhoods of Mt. Pleasant is exactly what the city and the Southeast Iowa Regional Planning Commission (SEIRPC) are doing.

?The City of Mt. Pleasant has a development agreement with Southeast Iowa Housing Inc., and they have hired a contractor to build a spec house where a nuisance property was once torn down,? said Sara Hecox, of SERIPC.

The home will be a three bedroom, two bath home. Hecox said the house is a slab home so there is no basement.

Construction of the home is funded through the Great River Housing Trust Fund. ?We have had those funds since 2011, and we thought we should partner with our sister organization (Southeast Iowa Housing Inc.) to be a developer,? said Hecox. ?A lot of our communities have the same problem, they?re lacking affordable housing, or lacking housing in general.?

There are income requirements to live in the home. For a family of four in Henry County, the family would need to earn below $50,650, Hecox said.

The house is to be built at 205 North Pine St. Swarm said the former home would have had the address of 710 East Henry. ?The former house faced Henry Street, whereas the new one faces Pine Street,? he said of the new address.

?We have a lot of relaxed zoning rules to try to encourage new houses to be built on existing lots,? he said. ?It?s called infill developments.?

The relaxed zoning, Swarm said, has a lot to do with setbacks for the side, front and rear yards. ?Typically you have to have (a set back) of 10 feet for the side yard, 20 feet for the front and 30 feet for the back yard. However, in an existing lot, we just have percentages so they don?t have to follow the blocky, restrictive set back,? he said.

Swarm said he was currently looking at a lot on North Main Street that is only 40 feet wide. ?Ordinarily, that would be way too narrow to build on and without those rules, that lot would just be empty,? he said.

?We love to keep people close to existing streets and sewers instead of building new infrastructure on exterior parts of town,? he added. ?We need people to connect to those utilities in order to keep maintenance low.?

?We want development everywhere, of course, even newer subdivisions, but we definitely want development in the interior parts of town as well,? concluded Swarm.

Hecox said the contractor, Granite Ridge Construction, is hoping to complete the home by Labor Day.

Hecox said the project seems to be running smoothly and hopes this is just the first of many development collaborations between Mt. Pleasant and Southeast Iowa Housing Inc.

For more information or to apply for the home, call 319-753-4311 or visit www.seirpc.com.