Jefferson County Supervisors purchase former bank building

FAIRFIELD – The Jefferson County Board of Supervisors announced that the county has acquired the former First National Bank building on the west side of Fairfield.

The county purchased the former bank building, located by 1900 W. Burlington Ave., for $361,000. The closing on the sale occurred June 30, and the supervisors are still deliberating on how best to use their new structure.

Daryn Hamilton, supervisor chair, said the county bought the building for two main reasons: for storage and to be able to move county departments there.

“We’re looking at some remodeling with that building,” Hamilton said. “We’re not sure yet what we want to put there. With the purchase of that building, we’ll be able to get all county personnel into a county-owned facility without having to lease space from someone else.”

Money for the purchase came from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan. Hamilton noted that the federal government has eased restrictions on how ARP funds can be used. Initially, certain funds had to be earmarked for COVID-related expenses, but those restrictions are now gone.

Hamilton said the building will be able to storage documents that are now being stored at the Jefferson County Courthouse, which he said is “overrun with old files” that should be scanned and made searchable online.

“Many courthouses across Iowa have already done that [made documents searchable], but it’s not even begun here,” he said.

Hamilton said the county recorder has been working on getting her office’s records scanned, but has run into snags with the company performing the task, such as not having all the pages in a document scanned, and then not being able to search them once scanned.

Hamilton said the former First National Bank building is ideally suited for new uses. The only load-bearing walls are the exterior walls, which means the county will have free reign to remodel interior offices. Not only that, but the building’s drive-through bays lend themselves to future expansions, too, because the county could add a conference room where the bays are now without having to change the exterior structure.

“We looked at several buildings in the community, and some would have fit the bill, but were too pricey, and others didn’t work because they were two levels,” Hamilton said. “We would have had to put in an elevator for handicap accessibility, and elevators are expensive to retrofit into an existing building. Other buildings we looked at lacked adequate parking.”

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com