By Michael Crumb | Senior Staff Writer

Bondurant’s Grain District Downtown Redevelopment Plan will embrace the community’s agricultural heritage while building on the growth the community has experienced in recent years, City Administrator Marketa Oliver said.

The redevelopment of the 24-acre-site would also be among the few similar developments across the country, and around the world, according to Scott Turczynski, managing partner of The 101 LLC, which is partnering with the city on the project.

“There’s only a couple of them in the United States that I’ve seen, and in Europe, Africa and Australia, they have retrofitted [grain elevators] into hotels, apartments and museums,” Turczynski said. “I’ve been in the construction business my whole life, and this is kind of a new avenue for me, and that’s what I find creative is the challenge of doing this retrofit. There’s these grain towers all over the place that are vacant. And can these be retrofitted?”

Turczynski said that to his knowledge, the Bondurant project would be the first to incorporate multiple uses of the retrofitting grain towers.

The Business Record reported on the plan when it was announced last week but wanted to learn more. We spoke with city leaders and Turczynski about the timeline for construction and what it could mean for the city of Bondurant and the region. Here is what we learned.

The Plan
The city announced the adoption of the plan to redevelop the property at 101 Lincoln St., which houses the 140-foot-tall grain elevators owned by Landus Cooperative. The organization stopped using the elevators in 2021.

The plan includes the development of a commercial district that would include space for retail and restaurants, an area to build townhomes, an indoor recreation complex, public gathering space, and the transformation of the giant elevators into space for condominiums, a hotel and event space.

The decision to move forward with the plan comes after the Bondurant City Council hired OPN Architects in 2022 to conduct a study to assess the feasibility of redeveloping the grain elevators. According to the results, “It appears that the existing structure has the capacity to support conversion into a multistory residential or commercial building with modest structural remediation.”

The grain elevators are built of 8-inch-thick reinforced concrete walls constructed on a 3-foot-thick reinforced concrete mat.

While some structural modifications and cosmetic repairs would be needed, “the structure appears to be in adequate condition to support the new usage,” the OPN report said.

Redevelopment of the site as an extension of the community’s downtown was identified in the city’s 2022 comprehensive plan and has the potential to attract more than $100 million in private development, city officials said.

The city is working with The 101 LLC as part of a public-private partnership to redevelop the site. The 101 LLC is in the process of purchasing the site from Landus, and Turczynksi said he expects to close on the property in late spring.

While he would not disclose the purchase price, he said an offer was made and accepted, and that he’s in the process of doing due diligence before closing on the property.

One project planned by Turczynkski is a distillery, which would first open as a production facility with a tasting room and space for meetings. It would eventually expand into a larger production area with a restaurant and event space, he said.

Turczynski said it would be his plan to someday move into a condominium in the converted grain elevators when the project is complete.

The site contains multiple groupings of grain elevators. The older ones adjacent to a former railroad track bed could be partially demolished and repurposed for a variety of potential uses, Turczynski said.

“I have talked about some kind of partial demo to make it look creative, make it look inviting where people could stop and rest along the bike trail, maybe have climbing activities inside or on certain summer evenings put a movie up on the side of it,” he said.

The newer grain towers, which are gray in color and closer to the road, would be involved in the retrofit for condominiums and a hotel, he said.

The timeline
City leaders said the hope is to have the project fully built out and completed in about five years, although the officials and Turczynksi acknowledge it might take longer to complete the grain tower conversion.

First, the city must make some infrastructure improvements, including the extension of Lincoln Street to tie in the site to Bondurant’s existing downtown. Once those improvements are complete, the first phase of the project would likely be the housing, which Oliver said would be higher density that would flow into nearby housing and be “a nice buffer between the residential and the more intense commercial uses.”

“We’re collaborating with the developer, and clearly there’s some infrastructure improvements that would be ours to make, and that is development driven,” she said. “Realistically, the first thing to happen is the multifamily housing.”

Oliver said the progress of the project will depend on market conditions, but that Turczynski has been a good partner and is working to make sure all the right connections are made and that the city is doing everything it should be to make the project a reality.

“So, hopefully five years from now we’ll be like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that’s done already,’” she said. “I’d love to see it over the next five years come to fruition.”

Maggie Murray, the city’s director of planning and community development, said the grain elevator redevelopment is a “unique dream,” and that it is a difficult project to assign a timeline, but the downtown and housing development could be possible in five years.

But the other developments, such as the retail and commercial district and an indoor sports center, could expedite the need for a hotel and more restaurants, Oliver said.

“If you have a child in team sports, they go all over for that. Imagine staying in a hotel that used to be a grain elevator or going to a nice craft brewery?” she said.

Turczynski said he’d love to see the grain tower project completed in five years, but that there is “a lot of legwork with that trying to get … whatever financing needs to be put together on that. We haven’t even done any preliminary cost on what something like that would cost.”

“But I would hope we’ve got the majority of the commercial buildings in place by that time [and] the multifamily rolling along at that point in time,” he said.

The $100 million in private investment does include the grain elevator redevelopment, Turczynski said.

What it means for the community
“I think this Grain District Plan is a continuation of the existing momentum in our downtown,”  Murray said.

“If you do a Google Street View from I think even 2015 or 2016, it kind of looks like a ghost town, not a lot of businesses downtown, and now probably in the past five or six years, there’s a whole new number of businesses within the downtown and those still wanting to potentially open this year. So, we’ve got some strong momentum there, so why not carry over that momentum to the Grain District.”

Oliver said Bondurant is out of space downtown, and the Grain District Plan will expand the downtown and open land for further economic growth and placemaking opportunities.

“I do think it raises the profile of our community, but I think it’s key for us to take advantage of recreational tourism,” she said.

Oliver referenced visitors to the Chichaqua Bottoms area or those riding the Chichaqua Valley Trail, which passes through the city, and families attending weekend sporting tournaments in the area as people the Grain District development could attract.

“And it also preserves our history,” she said. “The city grew up around the co-op. That’s the heart of the community. So being able to repurpose those is really important. Our comprehensive plan talks about wanting to embrace our agricultural heritage, and I think that does that. It marries the growth with embracing our agricultural heritage and preserving our history.”

The Grain District Downtown Redevelopment Plan also will help achieve the city’s goal of preserving a strong hometown feel, Murray said.

“We learned through the [comprehensive planning process] that our residents appreciate the feeling that Bondurant has a unique sense of place. So, how do we keep playing on that unique identity as we’re also continuing to grow?” she said.

Turczynski said the project, when done, would not only be a draw for more visitors to spend their dollars in Bondurant, but he also sees it as being a model for other communities where vacant grain elevators exist.

“I would love that other developers look at the vacant ones around the area and look at doing the same,” he said. ‘Wouldn’t that be cool if something could be duplicated in other regions in Iowa to provide workforce housing maybe, provide entertainment venues, retrofitting these old structures and rehabbing areas of a city that needs it.’