Johnson County developing master plan for historic Poor Farm

IOWA CITY - The Johnson County Board of Supervisors is faced with three options for the future of the historic Johnson County Poor Farm.

The county is in a master planning process to decide how to preserve and use the 160-acre Poor Farm, which opened in 1855 as a way to give mentally ill and poor residents a place to live, often in exchange for farm work.

Recently, HBK Engineering of Iowa City handed over to the Board of Supervisors the 48-page draft of Phase I, or the research phase, of the master plan.

'There's very few Poor Farms that still exist. Most of them have been absorbed into a community,” said Johnson County Supervisor Mike Carberry. 'With very few of them left, we saw a lot of opportunities for historic preservation to honor the past and then to move forward maybe in a way that can honor those people and also create sustainable concepts of agriculture.”

Supervisors could choose one of the three options or select elements from two or more options. The options are:

l 'County Park”

- Focuses on aspects like preservation, conservation and local food production. It is meant to be lower maintenance, according to the draft. This option would include projects like a trail network and reconstructed prairie.

l 'Collaborative Landscape”

- Similar to the focus of the 'County Park” option, but differs in land allocation and location, according to the draft. It includes a lease with the University of Iowa for biofuel production and a new pole barn and work to enclose and insulate the machine shed.

l 'New Century Farm”

- Would create new structures like livestock facilities and greenhouses, among others, according to the draft. It also would include housing development outside the historic district and would call for historic demonstration plots.

Carberry, who supports the 'New Century Farm” option, said he expects the board to meet in early July to further discuss the project. He and Supervisor Kurt Friese are stewards of the Poor Farm portion of the board's strategic plan.

'I think it had a lot more different concepts in it. It had a little bit of everything. ... I would like to do a lot of everything out there, To me, the more projects that we can demonstrate, that's wonderful.”

In recent years, much of the land has been leased out to private farmers while the Johnson County Historical Society gave tours of some of the historic structures, which include an asylum and two barns.

Since last season, a small part of the Poor Farm has been used to support local foods, thanks to the creation of Grow: Johnson County, an initiative to grow fresh produce on the Poor Farm to help relieve food insecurity in the area.

This year, the Iowa Valley Global Food Project has also begun production on the farm to make the food system more inclusive to immigrant community members.

Once supervisors determine the path they want to take with the Poor Farm, planning will move to Phase II, an in-depth analysis, followed by Phase III, the implementation of the master plan.

'It's something that could be a legacy project,” Carberry said. 'We have an opportunity to use 160 acres and to really do something special with it.”

l Comments: (319) 339-3172; maddy.arnold@thegazette.com