University of Iowa wants to buy Melrose properties

University of Iowa officials want to buy two properties on Melrose Avenue and Melrose Place for $1.1 million as part of a plan to build a $3 million surface parking lot for University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

UI officials will seek permission to proceed with the purchases and parking planning during the state Board of Regents meeting Thursday. The meeting information was released Friday.

The two properties are at 711 Melrose Ave. and 1 Melrose Place, to be purchased from Oceanview Investments, LLC.

The property at 711 Melrose Ave., a two-story rental house, will be leased back to the sellers for five years at $600 per year, UI officials said in the documents.

The plan also calls for the demolition of structures at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 Melrose Place. The UI previously owned the other properties and seeks to buy 1 Melrose Place, a single-story rental house. Those buildings are used as temporary/rental housing, and the condition of the aging wood-frame structures is increasingly difficult and costly to address, UI officials said. None of the structures are included within the Historic Neighborhood District.

The university owns the land directly adjacent to both properties, which are across Melrose Avenue from UI Hospitals and Clinics.

The purchase price of $1.1 million was based on three appraisals, UI officials said. Board policy is that property shall be purchased at no more than the highest appraisal or not more than 5 percent more than the average of two appraisals, whichever is the lower figure.

If the demolition is approved, UI officials want to build a surface parking lot with about 250 spaces, to be used by hospital staff and doctors. Those are spaces that will be displaced with the upcoming construction of the West Campus Transportation Center and the new UI Children's Hospital tower.

The parking lot project would cost an estimated $3 million, UI officials said, to be paid from parking earnings and money from the hospital.

To address the proximity of the planned parking lot to other Melrose neighborhood houses, primarily to the east of the proposed site, the university will design physical/landscaped buffers and will modify standard parking lot lighting to minimize light pollution, officials said. Also, operating hours for the parking lot would be established to limit or eliminate late-night hour usage.

The owners of Oceanview Investments, LLC are Roy Browning, Swen Larson, Timothy J. Dwight Jr., Jason Birt, Mindee Birt, Wade Shriver and Melissa Shriver. Roy Browning's spouse, Jo Ellen Browning, is employed at UI Hospitals and Clinics, but none of the other owners or their spouses are affiliated with the UI or UIHC, university officials said in the documents.

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