At the end of 2024, Cheryl Allen sat down with city administrator Ryan Schlabaugh and asked him about progress in Kalona. They discussed new housing, commercial development and the new Comprehensive Plan. The ultimate goal? To create an asset for individuals and businesses worth their continual investment.

The News: What does ‘progress’ mean to you, and what does it mean for Kalona?

Ryan Schlabaugh: What it means to me, and what I think the council would echo, is continued momentum, continued growth, continuing to refine and improve the assets and the services we provide the community, whether its trails, sidewalks, parks, recreational opportunities, and making sure our collaborations are good so that you’re getting the best bang for your buck, if you will. Obviously, we have a lot of taxpayers, and we want them to feel as though what they’re putting into the community is well spent and is an asset to them. So, to me, that’s progress.

The Comprehensive Plan I think will really help us kick off 2025 with respect to progress and just reinforce the things that we think the public wants. It will kind of frame it for us and give us some priorities so that we can better react to opportunities when they come up, whether it be grant opportunities or saving funds for specific projects, and maybe just realign our thinking just a little bit at times, just kind of reset it. I’m excited to see how that comes out, and then we can start to work on implementing those and doing that.

The News: When we talk about progress, sometimes we talk about having a destination or goal in mind. Do you have a goal or vision for Kalona?

Schlabaugh: As a community, I think there are small visions and long visions. Small visions being that we want to do some small improvements within the framework of our budget. That might be repairing a shelter, it might be adding some playground equipment, and so forth. And then you have larger projects where you might have to reach out and have some borrowing to do. Those are a little bit more long-term, like the Community Center and the new playground we brought online.

We’ll have to look at our Emergency Management system here in the near future. As we grow and expand, how are our facilities set up for the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years? Do we need to look at what those futures are for our volunteer organizations, whether its Volunteer EMS or Volunteer Fire? We obviously have a Washington County presence here with the Ambulance substation, and we have a Sheriff’s satellite office. Do we look at consolidating or enhancing those through collaboration?

When we talk about vision or progress, we have had success as a community in collaborating with others that do things really well. Some of those are the [Mid-Prairie] school district; Pleasantview – being a large employer here, improving their facility has opened up some housing inventory in our community as seniors have felt more comfortable moving out of their homes and putting those on the market as they transition; Kalona Valley Apartments for our low to moderate housing; the Chamber; the YMCA is a huge footprint in our community; the Kalona Historical Village -- we’ve worked really hard over the last year on a couple of really foundational projects that they have to try to be a resource for them and try to use what assets and skill sets we have to bring their vision to life and improve our community as a whole. Washington County Conservation – we have 200-plus acres of land that’s been brought on. We can talk progress there – look at the trail network, look at the natural land that people can take advantage of and walk and explore. They’re going to play a key part in helping shape what that’s going to be. Collaboration will always be a big one.

The News: We often talk in threes. Do you have three priority areas where you really want to see progress?

Schlabaugh: Number one is going to be the Yoder property, to really refine the vision for that property. I think that will happen in early 2025 and I think we’ll see a mix of housing availability, whether it’s in the Southtown area – North Ridge -- to the Yoder property as that takes shape. We’ll have different inventory levels for individuals based on their current wants. I think it will be exciting to bring that online. That’s a high priority.

The trail network, sidewalk network, connectivity – I think that is going to be a high one as well.

Third, I think we just want to continue to be a place where businesses want to invest in our community. Whether through helping existing businesses find new partnerships, or bringing new businesses into town, we want to make sure we’re a welcoming area for them to come in and invest in our community, whether it’s downtown, whether it’s on Highway 1 or 22.

Through building permits, we’re seeing a large investment in our community on a residential and commercial side like we haven’t seen in the past, which tells us we’re pointed in the right direction. We just need to continue the positive momentum and keep moving forward.

The News: Progress is an interesting idea in that it asks that you look back at what you have accomplished in the past and look forward at what you want to accomplish in the future. Housing is obviously a concern; how much new housing has Kalona gained in the past year?

Schlabaugh: We had 20 new dwelling permits, which could incorporate a mix of single family and multi-family units. We’re excited about that.

We’ve had a nice push on commercial property as well, whether it be new commercial or remodeled commercial. We’ve done almost $2.8 million on the commercial side, which at times has been a bit stagnant for us. We’re seeing more come in, and more discussions with investors and property owners that we think continue to point us in the right direction.

The News: Looking ahead, how many new houses do you anticipate in 2025?

Schlabaugh: For North Ridge, we aimed for 10 doors a year so that we could pay off our investment in the property in a timely manner, and we’re probably a year ahead of that. I think it’s realistic we could continue to have 20 doors a year – I use doors because a two-family is under one permit, but it has two doors, two dwelling units. Twenty new building permits might be 26 doors when it’s all said and done, for example.

We’re starting to see some building permits that are a little higher than what we’ve typically seen north of the English River, so it’s nice to have a good mix of first homes to dream homes be built out there, which really sets that area apart.

The News: When you talk about developing the Yoder property, what do you have in mind?

Schlabaugh: We’ve looked at it as a blank canvas. We’re really trying to keep the options open to see what works best for those individuals who do this for a living. Ideally, we would look to a developer to share their vision, and then we can help foster that vision and excitement and vetting through the community.

The News: Tell us a little bit about the Comprehensive Plan.

Schlabaugh: We’ve purposely tried not to share too much of it through the process. When we brought on 600 acres and really expanded our corporate limits, 20-25% from what we had for land, we decided at that point we needed to start fresh. We need to do a full reset, because things move fairly quickly, and we didn’t really have a mechanism in place to know what was coming. The original plan didn’t take into account going south, so we wanted to reset and really get good community input as to what things are important.

We had a very robust survey that provided a lot of good data for Impact 7G and Confluence to start discussions with the public through some small forums, some additional survey work, and then we started to bring those groups back. What we’ll do in early 2025 is take those ideas gathered back to some of the committees and say, here’s what we’re hearing – does it align with what you see the vision of the community being? We start to look at a high level, and then we try to narrow it down to a small level, just to make sure we vet those ideas.

A good example I’ll use is, when we did the Community Center, we really spent a lot of time on what the community wanted from it. And for whatever reason, one desire that continued to come up was mud wrestling, which was really obscure, but it seemed to have some backing. So, you have to vet those.

Our goal is to present it and adopt it in early 2025. We think we’ve got a pretty good gauge of the community. We really want to hear what people say, and if we need to pivot and change our path, we can. That’s the good thing about how we’re set up.

The News: Sometimes it seems like there are two Kalonas, the original Kalona and the Southtown Kalona. Does that ever become an issue?

Schlabaugh: I think looking at trail connectivity will help bridge that gap, and I think that discussion is very soon going to be at the forefront. I think it’s going to be a really high priority.

We’ve seen in discussions that the public is really wanting more recreational opportunities. The vision of the council and the Parks and Recreation group was to create a destination [Vista Park in Southtown], and I think they did a really good job of creating public facilities – splash pad, dog park, all those things. Now our next phase is to make that the most accessible area, and we have plans with some river bottom ground that the city owns that we can incorporate.

You can look at it as a three-park network [north side City Park, south side Vista Park and Oak Hill Park] with different amenities in each park. Based on what you’d like to do in a day, you could walk 2.5 miles one way, or you could park and go to the middle destination and do more natural trails or walk to the river. I think we’re set up to really do some neat things.

The News: I understand the city is bringing on some grant writing help so that you can explore additional grant opportunities that are hard to access on your own. What kinds of projects are you hoping to fund?

Schlabaugh: We really can look at all different things. One of the nice things about bringing on a grant writer is that they have a pulse on where those grant funds are and what’s coming.

There are funds out there for all types of projects. We got $400,000 for Vista Park from Enhance Iowa [in April 2024]. As we look at trails, there’s a good chance that we’ll be back in front of them again for a fourth time to see if they want to help collaborate with that. We’ll look to leverage as much as we can. We have a Riverboat Foundation that likes recreational projects and has a history of helping with those, so we’ll make sure that they’re engaged as well.

The News: Is Vista Park essentially finished and ready to enjoy in the spring?

Schlabaugh: The only thing we have left to do is signage. We felt really good with a soft opening out there in late fall with the splash pad, and we feel really good with opening in 2025 with restrooms done, cameras up, all that good stuff.

The News: Tell me about some of the things the City will be working on in 2025.

Schlabaugh: We’re excited about some collaboration with the Chamber using the lot we purchased on the corner of 4th Street and C Avenue. We think we can have a couple food trucks over there at certain times of the week, and adding picnic tables and some amenities would make that a destination for people to come and take advantage of different dining opportunities. We’re going to start small and build up and just see how it goes.

We took a year off the Student Built project to reset and refine what the plan is. We’re well into the Student Built design of the house for 2025 and we’re excited to kick that off. We were able to get some very good grant funding through the East Central Iowa Housing Trust Fund. They awarded us $80,000, which is a mix of down payment assistance and cash commitment toward building the home. We were fortunate to get $50,000 from the Riverboat Foundation to purchase a job trailer and tools for student use that will allow us to have everything that we need for students to succeed and learn a trade while they’re helping us meet that low to moderate income housing need.

We’ve got our eyes on some projects that are being done in the city of Vinton. They did some home projects there called Prison Built. We’ve been targeted as a community that would be desirable for a project like that, so we’ll do some due diligence and bring the council up to speed on what that looks like and see if there’s an opportunity to do that here as well. It’s all stick-built homes; you have the foundation already poured and they set them, and then you finish up the projects with some drywall and stairs if there’s a basement, and so forth. Vinton has done six of them, and they look wonderful, so we’ve started to look at what their model is to supplement the Student Built.

We’ve got a lot of stuff to do in 2025. We have a lot of projects, a great group for council, a lot of support.

The News: Looking back, is there one thing you’re most proud of? Looking forward, is there one thing you’re most looking forward to?

Schlabaugh: Personally, one of the most rewarding things we’ve done in the last five years is the Student Built project. Just being able to see properties that are in a little bit of distress, to be able to repurpose either the property or repurpose the land, and seeing how the community has really embraced that, has been very, very rewarding. I’m excited that we can continue it.