The $300 million, 650,000-square-foot plant will open March 4 and the impacts will become reality. About 700 people will be employed there initially.

Since August of 2016 when Prestage announced it would be opening its plant just four miles south of Eagle Grove, the city has been working to draw in new businesses, repair roads, and improve its housing stock, among other things.

But perhaps the biggest project, according to Bryce Davis, city administrator, was the addition of a $32 million wastewater plant that will service Prestage.

“The wastewater plant,” Davis said. “That’s a $32 million project. We had aggressive timelines and we met those. Building the business and staffing that plant and getting our certified lab. We haven’t had a certified lab in our wastewater plant for a couple decades. That right there is quite a feat in my mind for a city our size. That is a 30,000 population plant give or take.”

-Messenger photo by Chad Thompson
Eagle Grove City Administrator Bryce Davis looks over a dilapidated home at 406 N. Cadwell Ave. in Eagle Grove. The city recently took ownership of the property.

Currently, the population for Eagle Grove is about 3,500.

Davis said the wastewater plant is ready to take flows from Prestage. The municipal function of the plant will be completed later this year.

“The second stage is transferring city municipal flows from the old plant to the new plant,” Davis said. “Right now we are running our existing plant. For four or five months, we will be running both plants simultaneously.”

The old plant will eventually be decomissioned and deconstructed, Davis said.

The final timeline for the closure of the old facility is set for Nov. 31, 2019.

However, Davis said at the current rate of construction, the city will be well ahead of schedule.

The addition of a modern wastewater plant will have other benefits.

City officials are in the planning stages of a wetland retention area on a large piece of property on the northwest side of the city.

“That will be built with the provisions of the water quality initiative through state revolving fund,” Davis said. “The city of Eagle Grove, due to the expansion of its wastewater plant, has the ability to to utilize funding from the water quality initiative program for the improvement of water.”

A wetland retention area would improve the city’s drainage.

“That would allow for nutrient reduction and nitrate extraction prior to entering the storm sewer system,” Davis said. “That has a supplemental benefit as well as we will be able to pond up the upstream flow, which will allow drainage to occur at a faster rate in the city. Any type of rain event would not overburden the current system.”

He added, “Our goal is to assist upstream, plus using it as a water quality feature that the city could be proud of.”

The wetland retention area, which will need approval from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, is likely to be located on part of 148 acres of property that the city’s Community Development Corporation plans to buy.

The CDC has a purchase option in place, but the transaction has not yet been executed.

“The City Council has reviewed and approved some resolutions to move forward with loan agreements for assistance in land acquisition and infrastructure improvements to the site that would allow for residential development and mixed use development that will have different uses,” Davis said.

One potential use for that land could be the construction of a new high school, according to Jess Toliver, Eagle Grove Community School District superintendent.

But that development could be years down the road.

“We just don’t have the bonding capacity right now,” Toliver said.

Though it may be a while before a new high school is seen in Eagle Grove, improvements to housing have become quite visible, according to Toliver.

“We have a lot of people redoing old housing,” Toliver said. “The real estate market is hot right now. You have people building in town. Main Street is filling up again. There are very few empty buildings.. Older houses are going down, new is going up.”

Through the city’s commercial construction loan program, which began about two years ago, 24 residential units and two commercial properties have been built.

“It has been very successful,” Davis said.

According to Davis, seven new houses have been built in the Morningside Drive addition on the east side of town.

The city has also been aggressive in its code enforcement for nuisance properties.

“We went to the Supreme Court in 2017 for title to take abandoned properties,” Davis said. “It was a landmark case in our mind to demonstrate that we will not put up with abandoned or dilapidated properties anymore. We continue to serve nuisance orders. I have been to multiple trials to demonstrate that and we will continue to move forward with our code enforcement that really hasn’t been implemented all that well in the past.”

Most recently, the city took control of a dilapidated home at 406 N Cadwell Ave., located about a block from the school.

Roads leading to the city were improved during the summer of 2018.

Iowa Highway 17 from Goldfield to Eagle Grove was reconstructed.

“The city requested an expansion of that project,” Davis said. “We needed sanitary manholes to be replaced and we were able to replace those.”

He said the brick manholes were upgraded to precast concrete.

“Everything else was handled internally by the DOT,” Davis said. “That saved us time and resources. They got everything installed and will come back in the spring to do some punch list items, and in our mind we have saved the city money because we won’t have to worry about those manholes for a while.”

Wright County Road C56 was repaved two-and-a-half miles from the intersection at Iowa Highway 17, west to the county line.

Turn lanes on both Wright County Road C56 and Iowa Highway 17, south of Eagle Grove, were also also be added.

Some patch repairs were made on roads within city limits, including an area on Second Street and Lucas Avenue.

The Ninth Street bridge project will conclude in the spring, Davis said.

“We received a federal highway assistance grant,” he said. “It’s an 80 percent grant. The city’s contribution was 20 percent. We went to two 12-foot box culvert installation.”

The total project cost was $337,138.41

“Now we just have to pave the road,” Davis said.

He said weather caused some delays.

“It’s a gravel section,” Davis said. “It got too cold that we had to pause the project before we could pour concrete.”

The reconstructed bridge will have a greater load factor, he said.

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