Earth movers branch out for Kalona development

KALONA — C.J. Moyna & Sons is an earth-moving contractor, with a lengthy portfolio of highway grading and site preparation projects from across the Midwest under its belt.

That made the company an unusual pick as the developer for Southtown, a newly established neighborhood in Kalona, where they not only moved dirt and prepared lots for construction: worked out the zoning codes, installed utilities, made abstracts and sold off pieces of the land to homebuilders.

“There was a lot of like, ‘Here’s what we’d like to do, what do you think?’ type of conversations,” said Kalona Native Adam Kos, a partial owner of C.J. Moyna, and Southtown’s project manager. “Between all the expertise of all the parties involved, you would get to the right path of how this moves forward.”

The earth movers’ field of expertise lent itself well to Kalona’s vision for the land, which the city annexed in 2019.

Once complete, Southtown will be far more than just a neighborhood: it will include a 90-acre recreation area, complete with a dog park, splash pad, playground and disc golf course. It already features nature trails that meander through century-old timber, massive scenic ponds, and even a small beach.

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“If you took a state park, and you blended it with a subdivision, that’s kind of the feel of what we were trying to create here,” said Kos. “There’s an old timber, you’ve got some existing water features, and then we’re adding some recreation components to it.”

Kos said the variety was designed to compete with other housing markets nearby. Kalona, despite being a generally attractive community, struggles to compete with lower land values in many of its neighboring towns to the south and west, or the easier commute to Iowa City from those to the north.

But with so many amenities built in, Southtown carves out its own market niche.

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“The only way this works in Kalona is if it’s different,” Kos said. “It can’t be the same kind of cookie-cutter development that you would see in Johnson County. It’s got to be something unique. And so with the natural features that are here, the timber, the terrain, our ability to understand how the earthwork could move … you could see a lot of potential in a piece of land that someone else wouldn’t, who doesn’t move dirt every day. We can reshape the land to turn it into something that looks super cool.”

Kos said C.J. Moyna had to regrade some parts of the hilly terrain to make them suitable for housing. Many of the homes in one cul-de-sac area sit on soil that was previously 25 feet underground.

Drainage design for the neighborhood is sophisticated as well, but still uses the city’s drainage system for the most part, allowing developers to fit more buildings without the space limitations of home-specific septic systems.

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The lots cover a wide variety of property types, too. Many are sized for middle class, single-family housing, while others are several acres for more country-style homes. A few, meanwhile, are spaced for what Kos calls “villa-style” smaller housing.

The subdivision looks quite unlike it did five years ago, when it was unincorporated, and owned by the Shiloh church. While some natives still invoke the name ‘Shiloh’ when talking about the area, Kos said it was slowly taking on its own identity.

“It’s like hitting the reset button on a piece of property,” he said. “When you’re moving 25 feet of cut, and taking hills and putting them in valleys, it changes things … these things will be born, take their identity, and become their own thing as they come online. So some of the old lingo, the old habits of people calling it Shiloh, still happens. But people who interact with the property regularly, I rarely hear it.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com