(Spirit Lake)– The Spirit Lake City Council this (Tues.) evening approved a preliminary plat for a residential development being proposed by the Northwest Iowa Corridor Habitat For Humanity. The organization has purchased multiple lots in the area of 20th Street and Jackson Avenue, just west and south of the former Spirit Lake Schools administrative building. Jerry Welter of the Northwest Iowa Corridor Habitat For Humanity says they plan to construct several duplexes and some single family homes on the site, with the first one, a duplex, going up by the end of this year…
“There will be 13 dwellings. Some of them are duplexes and some of them are single dwelling homes.”
From there, Welter says they plan to eventually build on the other lots in future years…
“Since we service Dickinson county and Clay county, the next one will probably be in Clay county. So we’ll do the duplex up here and have, so that will be two up here, and we’ll do one in Clay county, and then we’ll come back up here and do either another duplex or a single dwelling and then we’ll go back. We’ll just kind of, every other build, we do, you know, in the other county, because we’re trying to take care of two counties with this organization, so.”
Clyde Ihrke, Zoning and Code Administrator for the city of Spirit Lake, says the development will fit in nicely with the surrounding neighborhood…
“That area’s going into an R-3 multi-family residential area now anyway. It’s going to work out nice. It’s a great area, good location like Jerry said. They’ve got nice little floor plans that they’re doing here. But also the city is excited in regards to that’s filling up that property. It’s been needed there. It’s setting up as a subdivision so it’s going to hold it’s own drainage, we had to do a lot of work with that on it, trying to get it to where utilities run right through the middle of that thing, we had to get that planned out. John Hite from Beck Engineering has been doing really good with that. It’s going to fill up a nice little chunk of ground right there.”
Ihrke adds it also fits in nicely with projects in the former school building and auditorium…
“The old existing school, the octagon building, the old administration area and all of that, that’s been recently purchased, too. There’s a gentleman that’s working on some things there, also. Plus the old auditorium. That was purchased a number of years back. That’s turning into apartments. So a great location right there for that. Close to downtown. They can still get to places easy enough for people living there. These will be nice little family starter homes that are really going to look good.”
The council voted unanimously to approve the preliminary plat.
