Edgewater Drive home saga apparently ending in Coralville's favor

CORALVILLE – The back-and-forth negotiations over the last home on Coralville's Edgewater Drive apparently will end Friday with the city getting the property after all.

Mark Brown said Friday that he has agreed to take the city's $200,000 offer for his home at 723 Edgewater Dr. That's where things seemed to be heading a week ago, but on Tuesday he turned down the city for a $220,000 offer from a former neighbor.

Brown said the buyer, the Sales family, wanted him to leave items that he wanted to keep. Also, the city will demolish the home and allow him to salvage material he thinks will come close to making up the $20,000 difference in the offers.

Brown, 58, also decided he didn't like the thought of someone else being the last person on Edgewater Drive and living in the place he has called home for 40 years.

Brown elevated his home five feet after the 1993 flood and escaped major damage in the 2008 flood. The owners of the couple of dozen other homes that used to make up the neighborhood along the Iowa River have since taken buyouts.

“I don't feel comfortable letting somebody else have that ‘last survivor' (title) because it's my work and my stuff that made it that way,” Brown said.

Coralville City Administrator Kelly Hayworth said he wasn't sure when the two sides would close on the deal.

After going from the city's offer, to Sales', and now back to the city's, he said this is his final decision.

On Tuesday night, a split City Council failed to match the $220,000 offer but did OK the $200,000 deal, which Brown is now prepared to take.

“It's good that it got resolved and that everything is going to work out in the end,” Hayworth said.

Brown has insisted he was not trying to start a bidding war for his home. The Sales family approached him after seeing a Gazette story last week. Brown said he simply was interested in getting the best deal.

Edgewater Drive is being turned into an earthen berm with a trail on top. That work is scheduled to be finished next month.

The city is still considering what to do with the area behind the berm, where the homes where. Edgewater Drive is near the city's Iowa River Landing district, which is being redeveloped to include commercial, retail, entertainment and medical buildings.