Summer construction is in full swing both in the Perry area and in remoter parts of Dallas County. ThePerryNews.com offers the following partial survey of ongoing building projects in an effort to keep our readers informed and up to date with the area’s growth and development.
The city of Perry’s Park Street widening project is progressing under the contract with Harland Concrete of Perry, which won the job with its bid of $67,840. Harland’s bid was about 35 percent below the engineer’s estimate of $105,000 for the work. An asphalt overlay will complete the work in mid July.
A big project about to begin is the Willis Avenue and Diagonal Road water main replacement and extension project. The Perry Water Works Trustees approved a $475,000 contract at their May meeting for replacing the water main along Willis Avenue between W. Fifth and W. 10th streets and for extending the main along Diagonal Road southward from Willis Avenue.
The Willis Avenue bridge over Frog Creek between W. Fourth and W. Fifth streets is nearly complete. The $753,000 project is led by Elder Corp. of Des Moines, with the Iowa Department of Transportation paying 50 percent of the cost of the project and the city of Perry matching the state funds.
The first leg of the $5 million Let’s Connect Perry-to-Woodward connector trail should become a reality this summer. The Dallas County Conservation Board in May accepted a bid from Rockwell City-based Howrey Construction to build the first 1.56 miles of the connector trail at a cost of about $570,000. Elder Corp. of Pleasant Hill, which is already working in town on the Willis Avenue bridge project, is the subcontractor for the grading. Rough grading is complete.
Related to the Let’s Connect rail project is the widening of the Wiese Park walking trail. Landals Concrete of Perry is replacing a portion of the six-foot-wide asphalt trail with a 10-foot-wide concrete trail. Landals’ bid of $42,555 for the job was 40 percent below the engineer’s estimate of $70,000.
Another big Perry project is phase one of the Dewey Field renovation. Lang Construction Group of West Des Moines is building and paving the new entrance, concession building and restrooms and will perform additional site work for $745,400. The new 1,050-seat bleacher arrangements will be managed by Seating City and Athletic Facilities of Excelsior, Minn., at a cost of $320,051, including construction of a 10-foot-deep by 42-foot-wide press box similar to those at Ballard, DC-G and numerous other high school athletic facilities.
A 30,000-square-foot spec building seemed to spring up almost overnight in the Perry Industrial Park. The structure is owned by the Perry Economic Development Inc. investment group.
Farther afield, several large projects are progressing around Dallas County, and prominent among them is the $29 million Dallas County Law Enforcement Center (LEC) in the 25800 block of U.S. Highway 6 near Ortonville.
Rod Reicks, senior project superintendent for the Samuels Group, which is managing the construction, told ThePerryNews.com last week some 96 are being drilled under what will become the facility’s parking. The well digging will continue while the concrete floor is poured and the underground mechanical, electirical and plumbing is roughed in, Reicks said. Structural steel is also arriving, so vertical development will soon be visible from the highway.
A couple of miles to the southeast of the new LEC, the MidAmerican Energy Co. is building a service center at 29817 R Ave. for the company’s growing gas and electrical services in the southeast Dallas County area. The site will provide equipment and materials storage and administrative offices, and service trucks will be stored on the property along with fuel and repair services. The utility company has not revealed the cost of the new facility, which is expected to employ about 60 people, but the 145 acres was purchased in 2016 from LeMar Koethe for $3.95 million.
Hyline International is building a new facility at 23560 250th St., about two miles south of the company’s large plant on U.S. Highway 169 at Iowa Highway 44. The international poultry producer acquired the 15.19 acre parcel in April from Midwest Oilseeds Inc. at a cost of $213,000. Inquiries regarding the cost and purpose of the new development went unanswered.
EW Nutrition USA Inc., a livestock feed and feed-additive producer, is nearly completion of its 40,000-square-foot manufacturing plant at 28800 R Ave. in the Ortonville industrial park. The German company bought the 17.57-acre parcel last June for $450,000 from the Ortonville Land Co. LLC. The new production facility will include a quality-control and product-development laboratory, a logistic and warehousing unit and adminsitrative offices. The plant expects to employ 10 people by 2020.
Construction of the Deery Waukee automobile dealership is underway at 1000 W. Hickman Road, catty-corner from the Wauee trailhead of the Raccoon River Valley Trail. The 23.41-acre Deery Brothers facility will replace the Adel Chrysler outlet. The property was acquired in March 2017 by Deery, Deery and Deery LLC from the Ralph C. Copeland Trust for a price of $2.065 million.
The city of Adel is carrying forward some $19 million in municipal infrastructure improvements on several fronts. Notable among these at present are the storm water sewer and sanitary sewer improvements along 11th Street east of Greene Street. Forty-eight-inch sewer mains were laid last week by Elkader, Iowa-based Progressive Structures LLC, a company specializing in subdrainage, underground utilities and box culverts.
