EDA to hear proposal from real estate agent about potential sale

By Chad Koenen

Publisher

Less than one year after selling Willow Creek Assisted Living, the Henning EDA is taking a hard look at selling another city-owned asset.

During its regularly scheduled meeting last week, the Henning EDA discussed the potential of selling Country View Apartments. The apartment building is owned by the city and proceeds from rent at the facility help to fund several operations within the city limits, including providing funding for the Henning EDA. 

“Is this something that we want to look at maintaining, or is it something we want to look at selling and reinvesting the money back into the community,” said EDA member Andy Eckhoff. “Personally, I think as an EDA we have ran our course on owning this. Our community needs things and maybe the argument can be made that we use the $450,000-500,000 that we get for another project and can use the income that way.”

After years of high profitability ranging from $33,000 to just under $40,000 from 2020-22, the County View Apartments has lost money each of the past two years as the Henning EDA completed a number of expansive remodeling projects and updates at the building like a new roof, new furnace and flooring updates to several apartments.

In 2023 the city lost $32,255 at the apartment building after spending an additional $38,000 in repairs and maintenance than in 2021 and the city lost just under $11,000 last year after once again pumping in nearly $44,000 in additional repairs and maintenance over the numbers in 2021. After all of the upgrades over the past few years the Henning EDA said there wasn’t much more the city needed to do to upgrade the facility in the near future. 

Henning Police Chief Mike Helle said the city should be in good shape in regards to maintenance, but utility staff member Tim Angell said one concern he has heard going to back to his time working as a maintenance worker at Willow Creek was the lack of ADA compliance in the apartments. He said the facility is grand fathered in from an ADA compliance issue, but concerns have been raised about the lack of ADA compliance in regards to the bathroom and more specifically the bath tubs. 

Going back to the potential sale, several board members asked what specifically the city could do with the proceeds from the sale, whether that is work on another housing project or provide something new to town. 

“If we did sell it what would we do with that amount of money,” asked EDA member Glenn Scott. “I think the community definitely needs some input.”

Scott said if the city did not sell the facility it could continue to reinvest the profits at Country View Apartments in the community each year, or create a special account and save up for larger projects as well. However, Scott said the EDA needs to get community input on not only what the city needs in terms of future projects, but also whether the building should be sold in the first place prior to moving forward.

Henning EDA member Nathan Thalmann echoed Scott’s notion that the EDA needs to have a solid plan in place on what it will do with the money should it decide to sell. He questioned whether now was the best time to sell an apartment building, while also selling the building after just putting approximately $90,000 in upgrades at the apartment building over the past couple of years. 

Thalmann and Scott both said they wanted to hear from a licensed realtor about what the city could expect to receive from the sale of the building, as well as get input from the community about what the proceeds should be used for prior to moving forward with any plan for Country View. 

The Henning EDA said it will ask a realtor to attend the February meeting to discuss what a potential sale of Country View could bring and what the Henning EDA could potentially do with the proceeds from the sale if deiced to sell the facility.