New apartment complex won't be build in Mt. Pleasant...yet

By STEPH TAHTINEN

Mt. Pleasant News

The proposed new apartment complex in Crossroads Business Park will not be happening.

After making a counter offer to Burr Oak Apartments? option agreement, the Henry County Board of Supervisors was informed Thursday morning that the company had withdrawn its option agreement to purchase three acres of land in Crossroads Business Park just north of the USDA building.

The original option agreement, given to the supervisors on Jan. 3, meant that the company would have the option of buying the property within 270 days, though nothing would be set in stone. The company could back out of the agreement and decide not to purchase the property, but the county could not sell it to anybody else in that time. As part of the agreement, the company would pay the county $1,000 to be applied towards the purchase price.

Because an option agreement is not very common, the supervisors chose to have County Attorney Darin Stater look over the option agreement and they presented a counter-offer based on Stater?s recommendations.

Despite this setback, Kiley Miller, executive vice president of the Mt. Pleasant Chamber Alliance, is not giving up on the idea of a new apartment complex altogether. He told the supervisors that he is approaching Regional Planning for an assessment of the area to see if new housing is needed.

Burr Oak Apartments was looking at building in Mt. Pleasant at the request of Miller, who was acting on the request of what he referred to as ?one of our larger employers.? Miller reported that employees of this company have had trouble finding affordable, adequate housing.

Miller was also at the supervisors meeting to provide them with estimated costs of creating a collective storm water retention basin at Crossroads Business Park. The basin would be located in the stream area of the business park and would serve multiple properties, rather than requiring each business to have its own retention pond.

However, the question is how the cost of installing the basin would be divided between the county, the City of Mt. Pleasant and any other companies that would be involved.

The total project cost would be around $250,000, estimated Miller. Of this, $80,000 would be for the sanitary sewer and $170,000 would be for creating the basin and hooking it up to the sewer.

There has already been $100,000 identified for the project, said Miller, leaving a $150,000 gap that needs to be covered.

How to divvy up this $150,000 is still to be decided. The county would most probably not pay towards the sanitary sewer portion of the project, and Miller said he doesn?t see how the county would be involved in the collective basin portion.

The supervisors will be making a decision on contributing to this project during Thursday?s meeting.

In other business, the supervisors accepted a bid of $156,545.45 from A to Z Mechanical Contractors, Inc., of Iowa City for the courthouse boiler project. The county has $130,000 in funds left over from general obligation bonds previously borrowed for courthouse improvements, and the remaining $26,000 will come from Local Option Sales Tax.

The courthouse boiler project is converting the current steam boiler system to a hot water boiler system.