Housing ills eased

By BRUCE SYMES
Register Reporter

Looking to help Iola remain a progressive community, Iola Industries has shifted its focus from recruiting business and industry to trying to solve a housing crisis that worsened with last summer’s flood.
“For years, housing has been an issue in southeast Kansas, and since the (July 2007) flood, it’s been even more of an issue for Iola. We think it’s certainly within our scope to try to help with our housing situation,” John McRae, president of Iola Industries, said.
“Our existing industries are most important to Iola,” he said. “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, so to speak. To help us grow and to keep the businesses and industries we have, we think affordable housing is the biggest need we have today and that we should try to help with it, not just to grow, but to keep us from shrinking.”
A few weeks ago, the group had a retreat with an outside consultant to consider its focus.
“He helped us take stock of where we’d been and where we are going,” McRae said. “He helped us see that just because we did things a certain way in 1955 doesn’t mean we have to do things that way today.
“Today, our problem isn’t jobs. In fact, we have industries today that have a hard time finding the workers they need. The last thing we need today is a new industry, and any new industry is going to look at whether it can fill jobs before it even considers us.”
Hence, the housing jam.
Without places for factory workers to live in, existing industries are hard-pressed to fill job slots; let alone any new companies that might eye the community as a base for operations, regardless of any tax, property, utility or other incentives that might be offered to attract them.
To that end, the Iola Industries Board of Directors decided to focus on housing and seek ways to make affordable homes available for citizens.
Tom Carlson of Springfield, Mo., a principle in the Carlson Gardner Inc. development corporation, was speaking in Hutchinson last fall when he learned from a Kansas Department of Commerce official about tax credits Kansas planned to offer builders in southeast Kansas as a result of the Flood of 2007.
“Of the places that were hit, he was told Iola probably had its act together more than any of the rest of them,” McRae said. Contacts were made, offers were discussed and a deal was struck to buy about 80 acres of Iola Industries land south of the Russell Stover plant.
McRae said Carlson Gardner will build 15 rental units with tax credit assistance that would provide affordable homes, which eventually will be offered for sale.

IOLA INDUSTRIES was formed in June 1955 by “a pretty diverse group of individuals that were interested in Iola’s success, and that included industry,” McRae said. Tony Immel is the lone surviving charter member.
It was formed as a for-profit corporation and today owns between 200 and 300 acres of land in and around Iola, “some of which is better suited than others for industry.”
“We’re always looking for ground that might become available,” McRae said.
Its success in industry recruitment is extensive and includes Columbia Metal, Gates Corp., Haldex Brake, Tramec Corp. and Russell Stover Candies in Iola and the former Klein Tools in Moran. It helps existing firms in many ways, including leasing property to them.
The mission statement for Iola Industries, since incorporation nearly 53 years ago, has been “for the purpose of promoting industry within the city of Iola or areas adjacent thereto, and to promote the establishment of new industries in our area.”
McRae stressed that mission, though tweaked a mite to address modern needs, remains a primary purpose.
“The board has chased that mission doggedly over the years,” he said. “Iola Industries works with the city and the (Kansas) Department of Commerce to find and attract new industries and to do everything it can to help the existing businesses and industries thrive.”

THE “CHANGING of the guard” at Iola Industries, as McRae phrases it, has not let go of its past. Veteran directors are on the board today — Immel, Ed Miller, Mary Kay Heard and Max Snodgrass have been involved for years — and Emerson Lynn and Jerry Skidmore are among ex-officio members who provide consultation and advice.
“Max is my go-to guy,” McRae said of Snodgrass.
Other directors are Judy Kramer, John Masterson, Bob Hawk, Lonnie Larson, Mark Cooper, Jim Gilpin, Ken Gilpin, Jeff Johnson, Larry Macha and Neil Westervelt. Other ex-officio members are Kent Thompson, Barbara Chalker, Bill Maness, Judy Brigham and Glenn Buchholz.
McRae noted the focus on housing was not the first time Iola Industries expanded its mission. In the 1970s, with Iola facing a need for physicians, the group built the medical arts building adjacent to Allen County Hospital.
“They identified the need to attract and house doctors for our community,” he said. “Today, we see a need in housing.
“Hopefully, if we can help generate the housing we need, we’ll go back to our primary mission of attracting new business and industry,” McRae said.