Dows Farm construction underway as Corridor’s first agri-community takes shape

The long-awaited and oft-delayed Dows Farm development on the southeast outskirts of Cedar Rapids — designed as the first “agri-community” in the Corridor — is finally going vertical.

Chad Pelley of Twenty40 Building Concepts, the lead developer for the Dows Farm project, said in a recent interview that the infrastructure for Phase 1 of the development, including grading, streets, seeding and underground services such as sanitary sewer, water and storm sewer installations, have been completed, along with electric, gas and internet networks.

Now, a number of residential units are under construction at the site.

Mr. Pelley, who’s been at the helm of the project since 2023, acknowledged the process of bringing the Dows Farm project to life has been a challenging one.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Mr. Pelley said. “It’s been one of those tough ones, one for the books. And hopefully it’s worth it, right? They say the hard ones are worth it.”

So far, several homes surrounding a “pocket park” at the site are under construction, supported by funds from the federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) derecho recovery program.

In addition, the foundation has been poured for a duplex building, Mr. Pelley said.

Some of the units have already been sold, and Mr. Pelley said he hopes to see the first residents at Dows Farm by sometime this fall.

Two additional CDBG grant applications have been submitted, Mr. Pelley said — one for an 18-unit loft style apartment building, and another for 15 units consisting of a mix of additional units at the pocket park and a number of townhomes.

Mr. Pelley said he’s hoping to hear back on the CDBG applications by August. “We’re feeling very optimistic that we’ve got a fair chance there,” he said.

History of Dows Farm project

Planning for the Dows Farm agri-community project began nearly a decade ago.

The idea of bringing an “agri-hood” to the Corridor first surfaced in 2017, when Linn County bought the 179-acre Dows Farm property, as well as an additional 306 acres to expand Wanatee Park, for $7.2 million.

The project is generally bounded by Mount Vernon Road to the south, Dows Road to the west and Wanatee Creek Road to the east.

The north 306 acres is adjacent to the county-owned Wanatee Park and the City of Cedar Rapids’ Gardner Municipal Golf Course. Because of its strategic location adjacent to existing park and recreation facilities, the intended long-term use of the 306-acre area is for conservation and related uses.

The remaining 179-acre area was established as the project area for the Dows Farm agri-community.

County leaders shared and refined their vision for the project via open houses and public meetings over a period of years, ultimately hiring Ahmann Companies to develop the property and the Sustainable Iowa Land Trust (SILT) to manage the farm component.

SILT later moved away from the Dows Farm project, due in part to a determination that an existing water well on the site would be inadequate for their needs, and the Linn County Board of Supervisors later voted to transition the project’s overall development to Twenty40 Building Concepts.

According to the project’s official website, the Dows Farm Concept Plan:

• Incorporates and protects the site’s significant environmental features;
• Integrates a small working farm to grow healthy foods using sustainable farming practices;
• Envisions a broad range of housing opportunities;
• Provides a unique living, educational and economic experience; and
• Maintains 75% of the overall site as open green space or a working farm.

Current plans still unfolding

As outlined, plans for the Dows Farm agri-community include clustered development on 25% of the property, or about 45 acres, including commercial, retail and a mix of residential from single-family homes to independent living and multi-family units.

Currently, Mr. Pelley said, plans call for residential units in several configurations, including single-family detached homes, apartment-style loft buildings, duplexes, fourplex townhomes and apartment buildings. Small mixed-use buildings with commercial ventures on the first floor and loft-style housing units above are also being planned.

It’s also worth noting, Mr. Pelley said, that accessory dwelling units (ADUs) — smaller, self-contained residential units located on the same property as a single-family home — will be allowed throughout the Dows Farm development.

“The market will let us know,” Mr. Pelley said of ADU demand, “but I would expect that we will see that happening sooner than later on some of these. It’s tough to pencil out homes anymore, and I think that’s one of those things that could help a young couple. If they had an apartment over the garage and leased it out to a student at Kirkwood, for example, that could really help close that (financial) gap.”

A section of housing for residents age 55 and older is also in the works, Mr. Pelley said, adding that he expects demand for that housing option to continue to grow.

“We’re very confident in that 55-plus component, because we just feel like in this environment, in this neighborhood, that would be very desirable,” he said. “Maybe it’s a grandmother who wants to live in the same neighborhood as her children and grandchildren. We just felt like that was — I don’t want to call it an amenity, but certainly a feature we wanted to include. Our neighborhoods have all the price points — owner-occupied and rentals. We felt like it made sense here too.”

In all, Dows Farm is expected to include a mix of 295 dwelling units and just over 40,000 square feet of commercial space, including an event center, shops and restaurants. Other options could include a farm-to-table restaurant, linking the project’s agricultural and residential components more directly, along with an event center, a coffee house, a garden supply shop and perhaps even a daycare.

Community components will also be key to the ongoing projects, including playgrounds and parks.

The commercial portions of the project are generally planned to be clustered along Mount Vernon Road, in a style similar to the Shops at West End development in Marion.

Overall, the commercial and residential portions of the projects are expected to roll out in five to seven total phases, spanning up to a decade.

Agricultural component still in flux

Plans for the agricultural portion of the projects remain largely undetermined.

Mr. Pelley has approached the Linn County Board of Supervisors, seeking an agreement that would allow his company to control the agricultural component of the project, but a decision on that request hasn’t yet been made.

“That’s up in the air,” Mr. Pelley said. “We’d love to purchase and control the farm component that was originally planned.”

An historic barn on the site was destroyed in the 2020 derecho, and FEMA funds for site cleanup were in limbo for several years. That issue has now been resolved and the barn debris has been removed, Mr. Pelley said, so he expects the topic of farm ownership to be revisited in the near future.

“We just know that it probably makes sense to control it, so then we have the flexibility,” he said.

Mr. Pelley said that he serves on the committee working on the expansion of the NewBo Market, including discussions of the groups that were being considered to operate the neighborhood grocery store in that space.

Field to Family was named in May as the organization that will operate the NewBo Market grocery store, and that organization is also being considered to operate the agricultural component of Dows Farm.

Once a homeowners association, or HOA, is formed at Dows Farm, that group will likely be critical to forming a detailed agricultural plan.

“When SILT wasn’t able to buy the farm as originally planned, we wanted to preserve that very integral part of this neighborhood, keeping it in tune with the environment and the low-impact portions of the development,” he said. “It doesn’t look like it today, but we’ve already seeded and tried to re-establish about seven acres of pollinators, including the main boulevards. It might look like weeds to you and I, but give it three years. For us, this is a true agri-community, and we will make that happen. Putting some of those decisions in the hands of the HOA gives us a little bit better control, and the residents will have a much bigger voice than if it had gone another route.”

While the agricultural portion of the project won’t incorporate row crops, a wide variety of other ag uses are still being considered, Mr. Pelley said.

“We’re working with various different entities, anything from a winery to a bee producer that produces honey that we could get on site, and have educational and outreach opportunities with the residents,” he said. “We’re trying to quickly incorporate as much as we can within that neighborhood.

“There’s more to come on that,” Mr. Pelley added. “We just don’t have a lot of answers right now.”

What will remain key to the Dows Farm project, Mr. Pelley said, is a harmonious blending of residential, commercial and agricultural features in a development that’s been a long time coming, and that has the residents’ interests at heart.

“Let’s get the neighborhood gardens up,” he said in a previous interview. “Let’s get the compost set up. Let’s get a couple of symbiotic relationships for an educational opportunity. We can work on many agreements and many relationships that benefit everybody. I think the coolest thing is having that happen organically.”