A housing renovation project that started in 2020 in Jefferson is having an open house and ribbon cutting ceremony later this week.

Adam Schweers is with Western Iowa Living and Court Street LLC, the entity that purchased the former White House Apartments at 215 South Wilson Avenue. Schweers says the Wilson Avenue Suites project was a complete gut job and everything is completely new, from the walls, staircases, and cabinets to flooring and wiring. He tells Raccoon Valley Radio there is one three bedroom unit for $1,200 monthly rental rate, eight two bedroom apartments are $950 and three one bedroom units are $750 per month. Schweers talks about how they determined the rental rates.

“Originally I had hoped to target rates that were a couple hundred dollars less on all three tiers. But with us embarking on the project in October of 2020 and the way material costs, and labor prices, and things of that nature rose, ultimately the price points on the apartments are very much driven by what the total business plan ended up coming out to be. The project ended up being approximately 30-percent more than we originally planned on.”      

Schweers also believes that rental rates have been increasing everywhere for the last couple of years and he thinks apartments are still a great need in the area. Despite some other obstacles with supply chain issues and various construction workers and contractors being sick during the pandemic, Schweers says their anticipated completion date was pushed back by a couple of months. 

A ribbon cutting with the Jefferson Matters: A Main Street and Chamber Community Ambassadors will be at 3pm on Thursday, with the open house to take place from 3-7pm. Light refreshments will be served during the event where people can check out the newly renovated building.