MCDC looking at Red Oak housing incentives

In 2022, members of the Montgomery County Development Corporation (MCDC) continued to  make strides to better the county.
MCDC Director Steve Adams recently updated members of the Red Oak City Council and Montgomery County Board of Supervisors on the last year’s progress.
Adams said over the course of the year, there have been no fewer than 13 meetings discussing the availability of fiber internet in the community. “This included meetings with the Adams; Montgomery, Page, and Taylor four county group, United Fiber, Famers Mutual Telephone Company; Mediacom, and the Iowa-Missouri Cooperative. We did update the engineering study, and Acorn Development picked up the tab. I think everyone was a little disappointed that FMTC did not get the Re-Connect 3 Grant,” Adams said.
While there have been some setbacks, Adams said there were a couple other options being considered for fiber moving forward, and Adams expressed his appreciation for FMTC to extend a fiber opportunity inside the Woodland Hills Subdivision beginning in 2023.
Adams also said MCDC has been looking at housing incentives, including seven meetings with city administrator Brad Wright, and made some recommendations to the Red Oak City Council in March of this year.
“Mayor Shawnna Silvius has asked us for further refinement of the proposed incentives for council consideration. These will be presented to the council in early 2023 by Alley Poyner Macchietto architect Daric O’Neal and myself,” Adams stated.
Adams also shared with the supervisors that multiple efforts were made to fill the empty K-Mart building, but were unsuccessful.
“Three different entities were interested in the building and looked at it, but they all wanted warehouse and distribution space. Sidewall height limits this facility to this type of adaptive reuse. A 2023 priority will be the continued marketing of this building as a retail location,” commented Adams.
Additionally, there were seven small business consults, five were new business start ups and two were acquisition and expansion plans.
MCDC had been partnered with Retail Strategies, a group hired to do retail recruitment. However, Adams said the organization was moving on.
“We met with them 10 different times on Zoom, and they did a site visit in April. It included a completion of a complete existing building inventory booklet for Montgomery County. However, we will not be reviewing a third year option for the contract. That did not end up going as well as we anticipated,” advised Adams.
Adams said during the last 12 months, MCDC has had conversations with four different housing developers for new housing in the county.
“One of the developers purchased Villa Village, who is considering adding 10-15 manufactured homes within the park. A second developer in Nebraska has been in conversations with Larry and Marty Barnett on the ground just west of 4th Street in the Woodland Hills Subdivision for the construction of 25-30 new rental homes. Purchase discussions have been made,” Adams commented.
Also, after a half-dozen meetings the Rural Housing Readiness Assessment has been completed and they were expecting to see a final report soon. Moving forward, Adams said a city housing subcommittee should be considered for development.
Adams said priorities for 2023 include:
• A concerted marketing campaign for tenants for the K-Mart building.
• Continued efforts to develop housing opportunities in Red Oak.
• Pursuing additional fiber options.
• The Webster and Bancroft building projects.
• Housing incentives.
Adams said MCDC was likely going to ask for an increase in the county’s investment for 2023.
“Due to our expanded advertising budget for 2023, we are asking for an increased investment to MCDC in the amount of $40,000 from the current budget of $30,000, however, it will remain lover than the $50,000 investments in 2018 and 2019,” Adams said.