The U.S.D.A. is sending rural development loans and grants to four projects in Appanoose, Pocahontas, Sioux and Winneshiek counties. State Rural Development Director Theresa Greenfield says they work with the local rural electric cooperatives, or the city municipal cooperative or the telecoms.
“We provide pass-through loans to them that they in turn, then lend to local businesses within the community,” she says. A couple of the projects involved health care. The Corn Belt Power Cooperative received a loan of more than $1.2 million for the Pocahontas Community Hospital. The hospital plans to renovate 12 patient exam rooms, the pharmacy, reception areas and build an addition for a new public restroom and reception room.
The other is a nearly $13 million loan and one million dollar grant to Aase Haugen Homes in Decorah to build a nursing home with assisted living and dementia care units. Greenfield says these projects will help fill some voids in health care in rural Iowa. “With recent closing of the hospital down in the Keokuk area, we know Iowa certainly has stress on their rural health care system. U-S-D-A is committed to investing into rural health,” Greenfield says.
The other projects are a $2 million pass-through loan to the Northeast Missouri Electric Power Cooperative to fund a material flow system for animal and human products at a facility in Centerville, Iowa. The Hawarden Municipal Utilities received a $124,000 grant to expand a revolving loan fund. This project will provide financing through the city of Hawarden to five businesses with the hopes of increasing local employment opportunities.
“One of the things I like best about our rural economic development program is that one, it puts the decision making in the local community’s hands and the local businesses’ hands. It’s not U.S.D.A. in Washington trying to tell a rural community, the best way to build their businesses and expand,” she says.
Greenfield says Iowa has nearly 40 cooperatives across the state that they partner with.