Main Street Washington & Bodywrx Fitness Center get $250k I-JOBS rehab grant

Iowa Governor, Chet Culver announced yesterday in a press release that Main Street Washington and Bodywrx Fitness Center were among the recipients of $13 million in I-JOBS grants to support physical infrastructure projects in "Main Street Iowa" communities.

The Bodywrx Fitness Center project, owned and operated by Teri Hartzler, received $250,000 in I-JOBS toward a total project of about $368,000. Additional grant money toward the project was through a Main Street Washington grant from the Washington County Riverboat Foundation.

The project will include removing the sheet metal from the building front, restoring the original facade to the building, creating a new access to the upper floor, and creating two large apartments. Bodywrx had been working closely with Main Street Washington director, Amy Vetter and other volunteers on developing the project for the past year. The Bodywrx building is a key downtown building on the east side of the newly renovated side of the Washington town square.

Go ahead and "like" Main Street Washington on FaceBook.

IDOT county traffic around Washington County

The Iowa DOT is finishing up counting traffic around Washington County. Every four years, the Iowa DOT conducts extensive traffic counts throughout Southeast Iowa. These traffic counts include state and federal highways, arterial city and county roads, and even some lower use residential roads.

The data collected this summer will not be available until the Spring or Summer of 2011.

Traffic count data is valuable for business planning and for helping local and state government to make programming decisions for maintenance, construction, speed limits, and other policy considerations.

Historical traffic count maps of Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT) for cities, counties and statewide are available for download from their website, www.iowadotmaps.gov.  AADT maps are available for download (as PDFs) for Southeast Iowa for the years 2006, 2002 and 1998. Older paper maps are available for order from the Iowa DOT offices in Ames.

Traffic levels are generally pretty stable around Washington County, with the exception of along the US 218 (Avenue of the Saints) expressway, which is continues to grow rapidly.

	2006	1998
- Washington Hwy 92 - by Korner Kreamery	8,300	8,000
- US 218, north of Riverside	16,800	11,200
- Hwy 1, north of Kalona	6,200	5,900
- Hwy 92, between Washington & Ainsworth	3,870	4,120

The Iowa DOT uses pneumatic tubes laid across a roadway to count traffic on this scale rather than using people or cameras.  Its a pretty good system for collecting a lot of data. The Iowa DOT also makes year-round, monthly traffic counts of some locations around the state, including a few key areas around Washington County.

Area businesses or government bodies that was help collecting and interpreting this AADT county data should feel free to contact me, Ed Raber at WEDG. I love working with this data.

Community beautification grants available

Keep Iowa Beautiful (KIB) has announced the KIB Community Beautification Grant Program, a competitive funding source for communities under 5,000 in population. Up to $5,000 will be awarded for beautification projects, and up to $15,000 will be awarded for projects addressing derelict buildings.

In the Washington County area, the eligible communities include Ainsworth, Brighton, Crawfordsville, Kalona, Keota, Riverside, Wellman, and West Chester.

An eligible project must have one or more of the following as its purpose:

• Litter prevention – removal / education / implementation / public awareness 
• Recycling education – implementation / public awareness 
• Beautification programs – flower, tree and shrub planting, painting & fix-up and general landscaping. 
• Public nuisance abatement
• Derelict buildings – removal / renovation including asbestos abatement and removal, recovery and recycling of reusable materials and / or the purchase of recycled-content materials used in renovation efforts.

To review the eligibility requirements click here.
To download to application, click here.

Applications are due at 4:30 p.m., or postmarked, by Friday, August 20, 2010. Project awards will be announced on Friday, September 3rd.

Iowa Small Business loans of up to $50,000 now available

The Iowa Legislature created the Iowa Small Business Loan program earlier this year, and set aside $5 million. The aim is to create and keep jobs in Iowa’s recession-damaged economy by providing financing to eligible small businesses.

- by Jennifer Jacobs (with some editing from Ed Raber)

To be eligible for the Iowa Small Business Loan program, the small business or entrepreneur must:

• be located in Iowa
• be owned, operated, and actively managed by an Iowa resident
• have 35 or fewer full-time equivalent employees
• have a business plan and receive assistance from an Iowa Small Business Development Center or another qualified public or nonprofit business consultant approved by the Iowa Department of Economic Development
• not be in violation of environmental, worker safety, and labor regulations
• employ only people legally authorized to work in Iowa
• not engage in the production, depiction, or distribution of obscene material
• not be in bankruptcy and not be imminently contemplating filing for bankruptcy.

Entrepreneurs and small business owners can apply for a loan of between $2,500 to $50,000 at an interest rate of 3.9 percent. The interest rate drops to 2 percent if the state loan is combined with financing from a local lender who finances at least one third of the total loan package amount.

Iowans must use the loan money to:

• upgrade or modernize equipment
• improve efficiencies in their supply chains
• improve their distribution and transportation margins
• reduce facility costs through increased energy efficiency
• leverage other sources of business financing.

To confirm eligibility and to start a loan application, businesses should contact their local Small Business Development Center. In the Washington County area, that is Paul Heath and Tom Pickering at the University of Iowa SBDC, (319) 335-3742.


Interested businesses and entrepreneurs can also contact Ed Raber at the Washington Economic Development Group at (319) 653-3942 or wedg@iowatelecom.net to get started.

The Iowa Department of Economic Development has contracted with the Iowa Foundation for Microenterprise and Community Vitality to assist with the credit review process and provide recommendations regarding loan decisions. The Department of Economic Development will make final decisions on which loan applications are approved.

Culver said in the news release: “I am pleased to announce the launch of the Iowa Small Business Loan Program as another resource to support the growth of young companies within the state. These resources will allow them to create new financial opportunities for themselves, their employees and the communities in which they operate. These businesses will create new jobs, make our economy stronger and help move Iowa forward.”

It will take four to six weeks for a decision on an application, according to a news release this morning from Iowa Gov. Chet Culver’s staff.

For more information, go to www.ISBLoan.org, or contact  Jason Yates with the Iowa Foundation for Microenterprise and Community Vitality at (515) 401-8290 or jyates@iowamicroloan.org.