Business View Civil Municipal June 2023

93 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 6 BUSINESS VIEW M GAZINE In 1859, the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad arrived in the riverport town, adding rail transport to its water traffic, and Ottumwa was well on its way to becoming the trade and economic center of Southeast Iowa. Early industry included coal mining, meat packing, and farm equipment manufacturing, the latter two of which are still major employers in Ottumwa, today, by way of JBS Swift & Co, and John Deere & Co. By 1960, Ottumwa’s population reached a peak of 33,871, but that number began to decline in the latter part of the 20th century due to the closing of several manufacturing plants, various agricultural crisis, and intermittent flooding. Today, Ottumwa has a population of about 25,000, and according to its Community Development Director, Zach Simonson, it is a city primed and ready to renew and regenerate itself, with plans to attract and retain new businesses and residents. “We face a lot of the same challenges as other small communities across the country,” he explains. “But we are self-sufficient and we have the tools. We have developers, bankers, and OT TUMWA , IOWA a lot of smart folks from the community who are beginning to work on solving those problems.” Problem number one, according to Simonson, is housing: employers need workers and workers need places to live. So, in 2022, with the assistance of RDG Planning & Design, a local architectural designer, and the Ottumwa Legacy Foundation, a non-profit entity created in 2010 and dedicated to community well-being, the city completed the Ottumwa Housing Plan. “We were clear from the beginning that the study had to be more than data,” says Simonson. “We wanted everyone around the table to agree on recommendations for actions we were going to take. So, we came out with a study that had four or five really strong recommendations, and big goals with specific actions to advance each of those goals. And in the last 14 months, we’ve been making concrete progress toward them.” For example, the Build Ottumwa program was created to provide a direct incentive for the construction of new single-family homes.