Riverfront fixer-upper for sale in Cedar Rapids' Time Check neighborhood

Few and far between are the riverfront fixer-uppers for sale here for $7,500.

But what someone might consider a diamond in the rough is on display at 1216 First St. NW for those with some imagination and the ability to see front-porch beauty in the towering collection of white-painted grain silos directly across the Cedar River at the Quaker Oats plant.

Jim Willmsen, a real estate associate who is handling the listing for RE/MAX Associates, had little to say about the house this week other than it was a "flood home," he was seeking offers for it and he had received one such offer to date. Willmsen's for-sale sign out front says the house is a foreclosure property, the owner of which is listed as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. on the property deed.

A look in the window at 1216 First St. NW reveals that someone took the time to muck it out and remove the flood-soaked walls down to the studs. Flood water here, just across the street from the 1960s-levee at the river's edge, reached about 11 feet in the house.

But just why the brown-colored, 920-square-foot structure built in 1895 is available for sale is not entirely clear.

There had been some 30 homes hit hard by the 2008 flood on the west side of First Street NW that directly faces the levee and the river on the other side of the narrow, two-lane street. The owners of all but three of the houses at this spot in the Time Check Neighborhood have participated in the city's buyout program, and those homes were demolished some time ago.

Most of these homes were purchased during the first phase of the city's buyout program with Federal Emergency Management Agency funds in a process which prohibits construction of structures on the property in the future. As a result, the area is intended to become and largely has become a swath of "greenway," a parklike area that will become part of an earthen levee if the city's current flood-protection plans for the west side of the river ever become reality.

Joe O'Hern, the city's flood recovery and reinvestment director, on Tuesday said that the owner of the house for sale at 1216 First St. NW initially applied for the city's buyout program and then backed away from the program for reasons unknown to the city. Apparently, the house then fell into foreclosure.

However, O'Hern said the house still qualifies for the buyout program because the previous owner had applied for it before the deadline to get into the program came and went. As a result, the city is now working with the bank to see if the federally funded buyout program, not a new owner, can buy the house.

The house next door to 1216 First St. NW, a blue-colored, 891-square-footer built in 1890, is the second of the three houses still remaining on First Street NW, and O'Hern said its owner never applied to the city's buyout program. The house appears unoccupied and its owner, Leonard L. Pfeifer, died in December 2011.

Robert Bates, a former City Council candidate, was renting a home at 1222 First St. NW next to Pfeifer's house at the time of the flood, and Bates said on Tuesday that Pfeifer told him that he simply didn't want to be part of the city's buyout program. Bates said the house he was renting next to Pfeifer's was too heavily damaged to save.

The third house still standing on First Street NW is the home at 1426 First St. NW of Greg Vail and Ajai Dittmar. Dittmar has been a vocal member of the flood-survivor community, and she and Vail both spoke out against the twice-defeated effort to extend the city's local-option sales tax for flood protection.

Vail said this week that he and Dittmar initially hated to see their neighbors sell their homes to the city's buyout program and leave the spot along the river. But that feeling has changed, Vail said.

"As time goes by, we actually have learned to enjoy what we have down here," he said. "I have no neighbors to argue with and we don't have to fight about parking spots. … I have nine blocks of open park space all around my house. … I can't get that anywhere else. So at this point, we actually love where we're at more than before."

The for-sale house at 1216 First St. NW, and the Pfiefer house still standing next door at 1226 First St. NW, for now are stuck between a couple of commercial buildings and so aren't yet sitting amid newly created park land.

Even so, Vail said it could be attractive to buy the house at 1216 First St. NW for $7,500, fix it up for $30,000 and rent it out. A person could recoup the investment in five to 10 years, he said.

As for the possible future of homes this close to the river, the houses still standing could be purchased in the years ahead if a flood protection system is actually built, the city's O'Hern said.

Anyone who decided to put in an offer for the for-sale house at 1216 First St. NW surely will like to know that the commercial manufacturing and warehouse property next door at 1208 First St. NW, in fact, is in the city buyout program and will be demolished in the months ahead.

Its owner, Linc Aldershof, said the family business, Cedar Rapids Tent & Awning Co., had used the building for 20 or so years before the flood.

Aldershof said he contemplated returning to the building, which took on nearly 11 feet of water in the 2008 flood, but then he said he realized that "too much was up in the air" related to the city's long-range flood-protection plans for First Street NW.

"Honestly, I see it all leveled in 10 years," Aldershof said. "… The whole Time Check area of Cedar Rapids is nearly gone and what's not gone will be."

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