City to consider loans for ‘Castle’ project

By Judi Hazlett

Journal staff writer

A plan announced in July 2000 to save the Castle on the Hill by turning it into a combined apartment building will be discussed at Monday's City Council meeting, Mayor Marty Dougherty said Friday.

The council will be asked to support the project through two loans - a $450,000 HOME funds loan and a $120,000 loan from the city's affordable housing tax increment finance funds, and to create an urban revitalization area to provide tax abatement for the project's development.

”The key will be if the project is awarded low-income housing tax credits from the Iowa Finance Authority and historic tax credits from the National Park Service,” said Russ Kock, community development coordinator. If the project is awarded the LIHTCs, then the city would lend the money.

Kock said the city should know by mid-August if the tax credits would be awarded. If so, the combined amounts - $4.3 million in LIHTCs and $1.5 million in historic tax credits, - will equal more than half the cost of the project.

”What's great is we have been looking for years for a way to save the building,” Dougherty said.

NuStyle Development of Omaha will do the historic renovation through the Castle on the Hill Limited Liability Company. The former Central High School building will be developed into 75 units of housing, 52 of which will be affordable to low-income families (rent limited) and 23 which will rent at market rents (in the $450 to $525 range).

”No designs are available yet,” Kock said.

The gymnasium and auditorium would be the only other uses kept in the building, which opened in 1892 as Central High School. It's in the Romanesque style and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

”Many people in Sioux City are supporting a reuse rather than tearing it down,” Kock said in response to comments that the building is “ugly.” “Those of us who have grown up in Sioux City look at the building as a historic landmark, rather than an ugly building."

NuStyle, represented by Tammy and Todd Barret, brother and sister, has renovated many other buildings, including some in Omaha. Kock said the project would take more than a year before completion, pushing it into 2002 or 2003.

NOTE: The loans were approved at the Monday Council Meeting.

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