Final 50 properties added to buyout program

CEDAR RAPIDS - Owners of 111 flood-affected properties hustled this spring to meet a late April deadline to be the last ones included in the city's flood-recovery buyout program of more than 1,300 properties.

The City Council has agreed to permit 50 of the 111 to continue as a last group in the buyout program while excluding 16 others - 15 commercial properties and a church. The rest dropped out or weren't qualified.

The council said allowing the commercial properties in the buyout program would create “a financial burden on the community” by removing them from the property-tax rolls. All of the commercial properties and the church, the Word of Faith Pentecostal Church at 716 Eighth Ave. SW, have been renovated since the flood, according to a city report.

The excluded commercial properties include two currently occupied by Intermec Technologies Corp. One is owned by the company at 550 Second St. SE and one is next door, at 509 Third St. SE, owned by ABS 509 Third St. LLC of Brooklyn, N.Y. Together, the City Assessor's Office values the two buildings at $5.33 million, and they have a buyout value of $5.5 million. The city's buyout program pays 107 percent of a property's value at the time of the flood.

Intermec is planning to move to a nearby building at 601 Third St. SE that's now under construction. The council's exclusion ruling means Intermec and ABS will need to decide the futures of those existing buildings; a buyout with federal funds would have put the city in a position to try to sell the buildings.

Other commercial properties excluded from the buyout program include one at 213 Fourth Ave. SE, owned by Lamb Land LLC with a buyout value of $1.275 million.

Three more excluded properties are on First Avenue West: one at 410 First Ave. NW, owned by Puckett Properties/Hovland Property Developments with a buyout value of $458,335; one at 426 First Ave. NW, owned by Edko LLC with a buyout value of $221,657; and one at 201 First Ave. SW, owned by Task LTD with a buyout value of $255,506.

To date the city has purchased more than 1,300 properties through its buyout program. It has used about $82 million in federal Community Development Block Grant funds for more than 1,200 buyouts, and $6.9 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds for 94 buyouts, according to city figures.