Cedar Rapids Neighborhood Development Corp. has new head, spurs new Oakhill development

CEDAR RAPIDS -- Marty Hoeger, a development coordinator with real estate expertise in the city's Community Development Department, is leaving city employment to head up the 14-month-old, non-profit Neighborhood Development Corp.

The corporation, with a local board of directors, was formed last spring with the help in $1.5 million in federal disaster funds allocated by the City Council for the neighborhood effort.

Carol Bower, who had headed up a similar non-profit organization in Des Moines, was hired to head the group up here.

Meanwhile, Hoeger played a key advisory role for the city and its Replacement Housing Task Force in the months after the June 2008 flood.

Hoeger will leave his city job on June 11, he said Tuesday.

To date, the Neighborhood Development Corp. has purchased the flood-damaged Village Bank and Trust Co. in New Bohemia with a mind to redeveloping it. In recent weeks, it has sold the property to a businessman who will renovate it and turn it into a restaurant.

The corporation's Bower also had plans to build replacement houses in what now is the city's Hayes Park in southwest Cedar Rapids, a short-lived idea she passed on after neighbors objected to it.

Hoeger noted that the development corporation has a contract to sell land it owns at the corner of 12th Avenue and Sixth Street SE. A developer, he said, intends to build a three-story structure there where a flood-damaged building has been taken down. The new structure will feature retail space on the first level and apartments on the second and third levels, he added.

Hoeger reported that the city's City Planning Commission has endorsed the new retail/residential development.

The site, which used to house J.P. Gasway Co., is directly across Sixth Street SE from one of the two Oakhill Jackson Brickstones apartment buildings, which are currently under construction.