Different pieces of a housing project puzzle are coming together for Greene County Development Corporation.

Last week the Jefferson City Council agreed to approve at a future meeting to offer a ten-year tax abatement for improvements to properties that are zoned multi-family residential housing. The idea came after a presentation was made to the Council from Rowland Construction Company President Andy Rowland. He talked about building four-plex units in Jefferson and some of the outlying communities in Greene County. Rowland is a housing developer based in Clive and has built similar units in Waukee and Bondurant, but he expressed an interest in building rental units in rural areas like Greene County.

City Administrator Mike Palmer says the Council will go through the process to approve the abatement for the entire city. He explains, the Council felt comfortable going forward with this kind of incentive because housing has been their top priority for the last few years.

“The Council has worked, and worked, and worked to find ways to get more housing and rental properties together. This is an opportunity we have, with very little risk, the City Council is not being asked for cash or any kind of property for us to buy. We can just change and allow some of our guidelines and allow this to happen.”

Rowland also presented the same idea to the Greene County Board of Supervisors. They recently approved using $30,000 of general and Louis Dreyfus funds to give to GCDC to purchase land for a housing project in Jefferson. Supervisor Chair John Muir says the Board wanted to participate in a housing project, and he adds they felt this was it.

“We thought if we could participate at this level and the young man (Andy Rowland) seem very open to looking at projects in other projects in the county, which we feel strongly has to be a part of us continuing to participate in any way. And see if the occupancy is what we’re being told it’s going to be. Those are a couple of things that we, as a Board, will look at very seriously, the success of it, and see where it goes from there.”

Final plans are still being put together with GCDC of where and what the housing project will be in Jefferson.