Some 100 neighbors need just 30 minutes to kill an idea for new houses on Hayes Park

Some 100 neighbors who packed a room last night in the former Hayes Elementary School needed just about 30 minutes to convince proponents of a plan to build 12 homes outside on a part of Hayes Park to scrap the idea.

One of the proponents, Carol Bower, executive director the new non-profit Neighborhood Development Corp., said on Monday, in preparation for last night's meeting, that her group was a “grass-roots” one that had no interest in pushing an idea where neighbors objected.

She was true to her word when, at about the 30-minute mark of last night's meeting, she decided that the neighborhood clearly did not want to give up a piece of the park for 12 new homes designated for people who lost homes in the June 2008 flood.

Bower's five-month-old organization had planned to build six of the homes and Four Oaks' Affordable Housing Network the other six. The Four Oaks family-services agency now occupies the former Hayes Elementary School, and Jim Ernst, the president/CEO of Four Oaks, hosted the neighborhood meeting last night along with Bower.

The meeting began with one neighbor asking for a show of hands of those opposed to the idea. Seemingly, a hand for every person there went up. No one raised a hand when asked which neighbors liked the idea of houses in Hayes Park.

Ernst and Bower then presented their proposal with Bower explaining that it was the intent to bring flood “survivors” back to their neighborhood with the help of a state of Iowa disaster-recovery program that would give each new homeowner 30 percent of the cost of a new home. The homes, all three-bedroom ones, would cost the new owners between $85,000 and $90,000 after they received the 30-percent down-payment assistance.

Bower told the crowd that she picked Hayes Park as a possible building site because there just are not many spots right now to build new houses in the neighborhoods where houses have been lost to the flood.

Dan Bedel, an electrician who has two young children and lives nearby at 1912 Mallory St. SW, said the neighborhood had at least 12 vacant lots right now on which homes could be built without the need to take a piece of the park. Many of those lots held homes that were too unsafe to enter after the flood and now have been demolished. Build on those lots, he said.

Ernst, who has headed up the city's Replacement Housing Task Force, said the city intends to do just what Bedel had suggested -- build new houses on some lots where homes will be bought out and demolished. But Ernst said the start of the estimated 1,300 buyouts is a few months away, and building on those lots won't happen until at least next spring.

The plan at Hayes Park, he said, was intended to get some new homes built while awaiting buyouts. He said maybe an effort needs to be made to identify lots like ones that Bedel was talking about. Builders are ready to build, he said.

After last night's quick meeting, the development corporation's Bower, a diminutive woman with years of experience leading a similar neighborhood non-profit effort in Des Moines, was not fazed by the neighborhood verdict even though she had put some months of work into the housing idea.

 “You know, that's what we're all about,” she said of working with neighbors and neighborhoods.

Last night's surge of neighborhood sentiment also easily persuaded Julie Sina, the city's parks and recreation director, to give up on a city plan to close the ball diamond in Hayes Park once a new diamond is built in Jones Park and two existing diamonds there are refurbished.

Chuck Charipar, of 1931 Cach Lane SW, told Sina that teams had practiced and played on the Hayes Park field stretching back 60 and 70 years and continue to do so to this day.

“This is part of our history,” Charipar told her.

After last night's meeting, Sina was considering how the field might be upgraded a bit.

“There's no reason not to leave it,” Sina said of the ball diamond. “If that's what the neighbors want, why not?”