Riverboat foundation signs $300k ‘emergency grant’

RIVERSIDE — The Kalona Historical Society will receive up to $300,000 from the Washington County Riverboat Foundation to move an old white barn from its roadside spot near Haskins to the Kalona Historical Village over 17 miles away.

A quorum of eight WCRF Members voted unanimously in favor of the grant Wednesday afternoon, a day before the foundation opened the application portal for its regular grant cycle, the winners of which are typically announced in November or December.

Besides its age — likely over 120 years old, according to WCRF meeting materials — there’s nothing terribly special about the barn. Washington County historian Michael Zahs said that was what made it so important to preserve.

“We sometimes save things that are not typical. We don’t save ordinary houses, we save mansions,” he said. “But most of us didn’t live in mansions. This barn would be a barn that, most people that grew up 100 years ago (were) familiar with. That’s what we need to save more of, from a historical standpoint … this barn, I would say, was at the higher end of typical.”

It is difficult to describe how rare such a structure is. Once a staple of Iowa farms, barns became obsolete as agriculture industrialized and most families moved into suburbs and cities. The iconic buildings left behind were mostly demolished to make room for new development, or slowly decayed from years of exposure to the elements as they went unused.

The Kalona Historic Village hopes to use the barn for an immersive new exhibit on its grounds, allowing visitors into the building to see displays of historically accurate farming equipment stored inside.

“You just don’t find many hundred-plus year-old barns even in existence,” Kalona Historical Society Managing Director Nancy Roth said in an interview a few days before the meeting. “This barn is in really good shape, for as old as it is. Yeah, it needs a little bit of work, but when you look at is as a whole, it’s pretty amazing.”

The building — currently located on the north side of County Road G36, just west of Highway 218 in rural Washington County — would represent a major addition to the Kalona Historical Village.

Roth said she wanted to better represent the area’s agricultural heritage in Kalona. The museum currently has a smattering of farm equipment, but nowhere to display it that matches the historical context of its use. While a line shaft building offers a farm-adjacent attraction during the annual fall festival, it’s far from a complete representation of local agricultural history.

“One thing we are lacking at the historical society is telling the history of agriculture and farming in our area,” she said. “We’d be able to elaborate more on stuff that we have, and tell a story about it, instead of it just being stuff.”

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Zahs and Roth said the building would fit perfectly on the northwest side of the historical village, where they plan to have a concrete foundation poured before its arrival.

Riverboat Foundation board members also heard an appeal from Marj Lins, one of four sisters who used to live on the property in the ‘40s, where she recalled keeping a pony in the barn and hunting through the hay mound for kittens.

“Seeing the deterioration of the farmstead and the buildings has been difficult,” she said. “We love the barn, and we hope that you will help us preserve the memories that we have.”

The foundation’s decision came after historic preservation advocates said they faced a time crunch, and may not succeed if they had to wait for the normal grant announcement period. Zahs and Roth said the current property owner, Matt Greiner, had plans for the land that did “not involve the barn,” and might tear it down if the building couldn’t be moved soon. Greiner did not reply to a request for comments.

It was not immediately clear how much of the cost WCRF’s grant would cover. Roth and Zahs said their price estimate for the project — totaling around $304,000 — was based on very rough numbers, and expected to need other fundraising to get the plan in motion.

Some of that cost stems from the need to lift power lines out of the way along the route, which hang lower than the height of the barn. Also expensive will be the creation of new roof tiles made to look like historically accurate wood materials, but with far greater durability.

Zahs — who by his tally has helped move 84 historic buildings, although none quite this big — said picking up the whole structure would prove logistically challenging, but still be more cost-effective than tearing it down and reassembling it, an approach he said could risk inaccuracy and damage to the materials.

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“It will be a newsworthy event, probably,” he said, after describing the planned route “through the countryside,” then down Highway 1 and Highway 22.

It’s only the second time the Riverboat Foundation has offered a grant outside of its annual cycle, according to WCRF Executive Director Patty Koller. The first was an $85,000 grant-matching request in August of 2008, which then-Board Member Ed Raber said was needed for the East Central Iowa Council of Governments to create economic development programs that would otherwise remain “virtually nonexistent.”

Wednesday’s decision blew past that dollar amount. While the board’s vote was unanimous, it passed only after some members expressed hesitation.

Although he later seconded the motion to fund the request, Board Member David Hoffman said he worried approval might encourage others to apply outside of the usual application schedule.

“My only concern is opening up a can of worms,” he said. “We’re doing something special here, way beyond what we’ve ever done, and then we’re going to turn around and get this in the winter and the fall.”

Members also said they were cognizant that the money would trade off with other projects in the area. Wednesday’s $300,000 sum was on the higher end of grants approved for a single project by the foundation.

In any of the last three WCRF grant cycles, it would have been the second-biggest check signed by the foundation, exceeded only by a $3 million allocation to the Washington YMCA indoor pool, $632,860 to the Wellman Library expansion project and $554,300 for Kalona’s Southtown recreation area.

“It’s a pretty big price tag, and it’s essentially taking away dollars from other potential organizations that could use it for more needy type endeavors,” Board Member Jon Read said. “We have a grant cycle coming up here, and we haven’t seen any of the applications yet … that’s kind of in the back of my mind.”

With the grant money now assured, organizers said they hoped to secure other fundraising from community members, and tentatively start the moving process shortly after the 2024 Kalona Fall Festival, which will be Sept. 27-28.

Whatever the timeline, Roth said she was beyond grateful for the foundation’s generosity.

“Going into this I didn’t know, I was trying to be positive,” she said. “I’m kind of speechless.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com