Like many of our communities across Scott County, Jordan has experienced vast growth throughout the past decade. Yet as a healthy city of 7,000, Jordan had a need for elements that help make a community thrive:

• No medical clinic and pharmacy, unusual for an urban community of its size.
• The existing library was unsafe due to structural issues, and the recession and subsequent economic downturn made matters worse. Municipalities had become responsible for new library construction, upkeep, and maintenance. With a decline in property values and state aid due to a state budget deficit, the city was challenged in its ability to assist in economic development or other much-needed assets.
• With an aging population and a lack of affordable options for people seeking a safe place to live, many older citizens were faced with a housing dilemma.

We recognized the need to develop a creative solution and negotiated and purchased a seven-acre site from a private owner in 2011. Keeping the communities goals front and center, we collaborated with private and public entities to start to design a campus. Within the space, it would include a clinic and pharmacy, state-of-the-art public library, and 50 market-rate apartments for people age 55+.

With the financial undertaking and the state deficit of funding, you may be asking, “How can such a large project be paid for?”

A unique set of circumstances such as this begs for partners such as a community development agency, with access to funding sources and the ability to work across multiple partners successfully. Funds were leveraged by using a combination of CDA tax levy dollars, a county to city loan, Tax Exempt G.O. backed revenue bonds, and tenant improvement funds provided by Scott County and St. Francis Regional Medical Center.

The CDA secured a buildable 7-acre site using Special Benefit Tax dollars for a mixed-use campus that was well suited for the development. Once that happened, partnership negotiations between the county, CDA, city, and St. Francis Regional Medical Center began in earnest.
The county would provide a loan to the city for the library, and the CDA would finance a shell lease for the clinic and pharmacy with the county offering a tenant build-out incentive for the pharmacy tenant. Rental income provides ongoing cash flow, and we can ensure that the prices of the individual units stay within reach for many Jordan seniors.

We’re proud of this collaboration, and ultimately, the lives that are positively impacted by the homes that were created. We believe measuring success can be both economic and psychological.

• Obviously, a shovel-ready development cost of 11.5 million dollars provided a needed boost to the local economy by providing jobs and generating needed tax revenue and fees to the city.
• Libraries are often taken for granted. A new state-of-the-art library space created now, opposed to later when the economy recovered, is a vital asset for the community.
• Access to medical care is a frequent concern for any community, and the addition of facilities creates opportunities for healthier citizens.

To ask a question or learn more about the details of the project, please email us at cda-info@scottcda.org. We’d love to hear from you.