Rest easy Council Street NE homeowners; Jim Sattler has given up idea for a manufactured-home park; he’s got new plans, though

Owners of newer, nicer homes along Council Street NE just south of Robins and north of the proposed Tower Terrace Road extension can breathe a little easier.

Jim Sattler, president of Jim Sattler Inc. Custom Homes, has given up his plan to build a manufactured home park in the neighborhood.

It is a plan neighbors had been fighting for at least three years and against which last September they had amassed more than 800 signatures on petitions in opposition.

Those signatures in that month helped prompt the City Planning Commission to reject Sattler’s latest version of a manufactured home park.

“I think you just get to a point where – we’re on our sixth year (of planning for the site) – you just say, ‘Let’s use the land for something. Let’s move ahead,’” Sattler explained on Thursday about his plans to give up on manufactured homes at the Council Street NE site.

Sattler now expects to appear in front of the City Planning Commission anew in August to seek a change in zone on 60-plus acres of land east along Council Street NE and north of the proposed Tower Terrace Road extension. He will seek an R-3 single-family home designation for much of the site where he would like to build 157 single-family homes. On the southern part of the site, he plans 35 to 45 condominium units.

Sattler said the lots for the single-family homes will be from 60 to 80 feet wide, with larger lots and more expensive homes next to existing homes. The larger-lot homeS might be in the $180,000 to $250,000 price range, while others elsewhere in the development will range from $130,000 to $160,000 or $180,000 on homes with garages.

Sattler said he was aware of the Iowa Department of Economic Development’s recent program to provide down payment assistance for 177 new residences in Cedar Rapids with prices at $180,000 or lower. All of that money has been spoken for, but Sattler said he hopes the state might provide a second round of such funding for some who might purchase a residence in his new development.

Some of those affected by the June 2008 flood likely will buy a home there, he said.

If his latest plans make it thorough the City Hall approval process, Sattler said he expects to start building homes in the spring, and he said it could take two to five years to build the project to completion depending on demand.

“Fortunately, I think Cedar Rapids is in a reasonably good position,” he said. “But I wouldn’t want to be overconfident.”

Sattler said he and property owner Ed Horn control about 130 acres, which is split by Council Street NE.

Development of the western part of the property will await planning for the Tower Terrace Road extension, though Sattler said he envisioned a mixed-use development there along what will be a major thoroughfare.

He called this spot “one of the last open spaces” left to build on in the Rockwell Collins area.

City and state celebrate funding that will help put people into 177 new residences by year’s end

Sometimes a city needs a dog-and-pony show.

At least the case could be made for the one — for the news conference — on Thursday in which state and local officials met in a new housing development in northwest Cedar Rapids to celebrate a significant infusion of federal dollars designed to help build 177 owner-occupied residences here by the end of the year.
Of the 177, 94 will be single-family homes and 83 will be condominiums.

In total, the Iowa Department of Economic Development and the Rebuild Iowa Office are steering about $7.5 million in federal Community Development Block Grant funds into Cedar Rapids for the new construction. Statewide including in Cedar Rapids, a total of $17 million is being spent on the program, which will result in a total of 343 new owner-occupied residences, Mike Tramontina, director of the state economic development agency, noted at Thursday’s news conference.

Lt. Gen. Ron Dardis, who heads up the Rebuild Iowa Office, said the homebuilding is part disaster recovery and part economic stimulus that will fill a need for affordable housing in Cedar Rapids that existed before the June 2008 flood and exists even more now.

Those purchasing the 177 new residents can qualify to receive up to 30 percent of the cost of the home or condominium as down payment assistance on new homes worth $180,000 or less. The new owners must have a household income at or below the average median household income and they must be able to support a mortgage on the new residence.

Dardis said the program’s down payment assistance will open up some of the homes to those who lost residences in the flood, and as a result, will allow some flood victims to regain “a sense of neighborhood.” It’s hard to measure the extra value of that, Dardis said.

Thursday’s news conference on Moose Drive NW in the Wilderness Estates Edition took place almost directly in front of the basement of Rick Davis’ new house.

Davis, an active member of the Northwest Neighbors, lost his house in the Time Check Neighborhood, and he said he Thursday he would not be preparing to move into a new house on the edge of town except for the down payment assistance in the program that was being celebrated on Thursday.

A lover of the Time Check Neighborhood, Davis said he did not want to live there now because he didn’t trust the river.

“I’m out in the country now,” he joked. “I’ve got corn instead of the river.”

Ben Busch spoke at the news conference and said the program was allowing him, wife Jenna and their two young children to move out of apartments and into not just their first house, but a new house.

City Manager Jim Prosser noted that 20 local builders are involved in building the 177 new residences that are part of the down payment assistance program. He called the funding program a “signature” one and he said it has been well-designed to provide needed housing in an efficient way.

Prosser pointed to a January 2009 survey of the city’s flood-recovery housing needs, and he said the 177 new residences plus another 20 new homes being build in the Oakhill Jackson Neighborhood have put the city well on the way to meeting a goal of seeing 300 or so owner-occupied residences built as part of the city’s flood recovery.

Local home builders already have been inquiring about the prospects of a second round of funding for the program, and the state’s Tramontina did not rule out such a prospect. He said it would depend on money and actual housing demand in Cedar Rapids.

Kyle Skogman, president of Skogman Homes, left Tramontina with an idea. Skogman said the state of Iowa should consider similar housing incentives in the years ahead as the city buys out and demolishes flood-damaged houses and has lots, in some instances, on which new homes can be built.