Waterloo may have found a solution to one of its brownfield sites.
The city, in collaboration with the volunteer-run Waterloo Development Corporation (WDC), has spent years mulling over what to do with the industrially polluted lot near the John Deere Museum and riverfront, and may have settled on an answer: a youth sports complex.
The site has been vacant for nearly 20 years, but soon may spring to life with the possibility of eight full-size basketball courts and enough volleyball courts to host a 96-team tournament, as well as pickleball to keep the space occupied during off seasons.
Jim Miller is on the Board of Directors for the WDC. He said that the facility makes sense not only for the Cedar Valley, but for the region at-large.
“This was an area where we knew people were leaving town every weekend to go to these facilities around the Midwest.” he said. “We didn’t have anything comparable to keep our families in the community as well as bring in others.”
He cited a feasibility study conducted over the past year as a strong argument for moving forward with construction. According to it, each event hosted by the Waterloo Court Works could wrangle the city up to a million dollars.
Fundraising is ongoing, and nothing has been set in stone, Miller said; the first phase of the project is sitework, made possible by a $1.5 million reimbursement from the Iowa Economic Development Authority specifically for brownfield sites.
“The city owns the land right now and will be paying for the site work,” he said. “Whether this development happens or not, work needed to be done on that site to make it ready for future development.”
The facility will be privately funded to the tune of a $32 million construction cost estimate. Miller and the WDC have presented their proposal before both the Waterloo City Council, the Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors, and the Waterloo community, all of which, Miller said, have given an enthusiastic green light.
“There’s been a lot of phone calls that I’ve received asking, ‘Can we do this in there?’ or, ‘Can we do gymnastics and dance?’ The feedback’s been very positive that there’s potentially an option that could exist here in the Cedar Valley for a lot of different events to take place,” he said.