New housing completed in Mt. Pleasant

MT. PLEASANT—After just over a year, Joe Mitchell has announced the town homes on East Monroe in Mt. Pleasant are completed and move-in ready.

Back in August 2021, Mitchell and his parents bought a three-acre lot of land on East Monroe Street with the intent of developing additional housing options in the Mt. Pleasant area.

According to Mitchell, the project’s success is thanks in part to the willingness of the City of Mt. Pleasant to work on developing the area with him, and the Workforce Housing Tax Credit Grant.

“I found out about that the Workforce Housing Tax Credit grant provides to every community in Iowa, but specifically, they have quite a bit of money set aside for rural towns like Mount Pleasant to build workforce housing and housing that the average person can afford, and they help offset that cost by giving you this tax credit/grant,” Mitchell said.

The project received $300,000 from the grant for development.

Eight town home units were created in two buildings.

One building houses 1,300-square-foot units with two bedrooms and two baths. The other contains three-bedroom units with two bathrooms over 1,900 square feet.

According to Mitchell, these are the first condo/town home type buildings built in the Mt. Pleasant area in a long time.

The smaller of the two includes lawn care and snow removal.

“They’re very spacious,” Mitchell said. “They could definitely have at least a family of three, maybe four. The other building, you could have five or six.”

While the units only opened recently, over half are already occupied.

Mitchell isn’t done with Monroe Street, yet.

“Starting next year, myself and a different set of partners are going to be building 20 town homes in Mt. Pleasant,” He said. “Those are actually going to be on West Monroe Street.”

In partnership with Kinney and Sons, Mitchell has already applied for another grant to fund this next project.

The expectation for these future units is to provide an alternative to owning a whole single-family home, and instead offer condos/town homes for sale.

“I think there's a lot of specifically older folks and young professionals that like having their own unit, but one that’s a little more affordable,” Mitchell said. “We're really excited about the project and what we're going to do.”

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com