Michael Kattchee, who died at age 92, was Coralville mayor during 16 years of city’s boom

CORALVILLE — A man who governed Coralville for parts of four decades died last week at age 92.

Michael Kattchee died April 20 at his home in Coralville, where he was mayor from 1978 to 1993. Before that, he served on the Coralville City Council from 1966 to 1977.

Some of the ideas sparked in council goal-setting sessions in the late 1980s and early 1990s now have come to fruition in Coralville, one of the state’s fastest-growing cities, said City Administrator Kelly Hayworth, who worked with Kattchee for five years.

“The time period he was involved in Coralville is when the boom started here,” Hayworth said Friday. “He had a huge impact on Coralville.”

Kattchee was born in Lithuania in 1932. His family was forced to flee their home in 1940 when Russian troops invaded the Baltic states. They lived several months in Polish refugee camps before settling in Munich, Germany, where they survived World War II. The family immigrated to the United States in 1950 and lived in Iowa City.

Kattchee was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in the Signal Corps in Japan, where he became a naturalized American citizen in 1953. He returned to Iowa and started working at Collins Radio Company in Cedar Rapids. He earned a math degree from the University of Iowa in 1959.

Kattchee was chief engineer and plant superintendent at Hunter Manufacturing Company, eventually becoming the owner. He also owned and operated Mike’s Standard Station on Highway 6, also known as “the strip.”

Library, fire station, city hall, rec center happened under Kattchee

Outside his day job, Kattchee served on the growing city’s Planning & Zoning Commission before joining the council. During that time, there were annexations and community development planning meetings where city leaders talked about what they wanted for their town, Hayworth said.

“The council and the mayor started doing these goal-setting sessions,” he said. “The first session they talked about the area that ultimately became Iowa River Landing and how that needed to be improved.”

The second thing Kattchee thought the city needed was a convention center to serve the region, Hayworth said. That idea bloomed into what is now the Hyatt Regency Coralville Hotel & Conference Center in the Iowa River Landing.

During his 16-year tenure as mayor, Kattchee saw the building of the new library, fire station, city hall, and recreation center. He was also instrumental in the development of the UI Oakdale Research Park, the upgrades of the Coralville Wastewater Plant and the start of Coralville’s recycling program.

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A humorous and compelling public speaker, according to his obituary, it was said Kattchee “had never met a podium he didn’t like.”

“He was extremely involved regionally,” serving on the Johnson County Council of Governments, the Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Iowa League of Cities, Hayworth said of Kattchee. “It’s not like he was just looking out for Coralville. He was concerned with the region and state.”

While serving in public office for 27 years is rare, Coralville has been fortunate to have had other long-serving leaders. Mayor Jim Fausett, who died in 2017 at age 85, served 17 years.

“For people of Mike’s generation, giving back to the community was really important,” Hayworth said of Kattchee. “He showed that in many, many ways.”

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