Johnson County OKs repairs for affordable housing project

IOWA CITY — The Johnson County Board of Supervisors has approved up to $500,000 in repairs for a 15-unit apartment complex in Iowa City the county bought to create more affordable housing.

The planned repairs include replacing furnaces, air conditioning units, water heaters and electrical service in each unit and improving basement waterproofing.

The county purchased the property, at 1102 Hollywood Blvd. in Iowa City, in summer 2024 for $1.7 million, marking the first time the county has directly owned housing stock. The planned repairs, expected to cost a little over $420,000, are the county’s first priority. But the county has a list of other work officials would like done on the property if other funds remain.

“If we get down to that last 40 or 50,000 we can review where we're at and then decide if there's anything special we still need to hit, or if we need to come back and discuss funding,” Facilities and Planning Manager Dave Curtis said at a board work session.

Lower on the list of priorities include replacing sidewalks, venting bathroom exhausts to the exterior, ensuring gutters and downspouts work correctly and adding additional heat protection near stoves and ovens. The repair money will come out of the county’s general fund.

Contract awarded without formal process

The contract was awarded to McComas-Lacina construction without a formal bidding process. The Iowa Code allows low-rent housing projects to be exempted from a competitive bidding process.

McComas-Lacina construction has worked on other county projects, including the remodeling of the county administration offices and work within the Health and Human Services building.

While all supervisors present at a meeting approved the work, Supervisor Rod Sullivan said he was doing so reluctantly.

“It just seems to me like a really bad idea to have any exception to the bidding process. But I also know that we're in an absolute crisis of housing right now, and we can't have this sit much longer,” Sullivan said at a work session.

The bidding process typically take at least a few months before a contract awarded.

“I was surprised at this, too, but I'll say, if we went down the bidding process … the cost to write the scope for this project would be pretty enormous, which is just going to cut back on what we can actually do,” Curtis said of the exemption.

Curtis said he informally requested proposals from four area contractors and got only one response back.

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Future of the property

A steering committee for the property, made up of county staff and the board, has been meeting regularly.

County staff previously indicated to the board they recommended that the county opts not to retain ownership of the apartments, due to the amount of resources it would take to manage the property.

County Social Services Director Lynette Jacoby previously told The Gazette that options could include finding a nonprofit property manager or issuing a request for proposals, with affordability requirements in place, to assume ownership and operations.

The request for proposal option could look similar to what the city of Cedar Rapids did with its purchase of a building in Wellington Heights, where it renovated apartments and turned ownership over to the Hawkeye Area Community Action Program to manage and set affordability requirements.

Comments: megan.woolard@thegazette.com