Image courtesy of Washington Economic Development Group

The first purchaser of lots in Washington’s new business park on the south side of Washington is KCTC.

The Kalona Cooperative Technology Company is purchasing two adjacent lots and plans to build on one of those. The city council approved an exemption from the covenant that says each lot must have a building. At Tuesday’s Washington City Council meeting City Administrator Brent Hinson said, “It’s not an uncommon thing in this that you would have somebody that would want to buy two lots. And if they’re going to bring development to Washington, you don’t want to discourage that just because it happens that we didn’t plat it exactly the size that they wanted.” He explained the clause was to avoid having someone buy the lots and then just hold them to resell, which isn’t the case here, “This is a company that is going to put a significant investment in on this site, and it just happens that they’re buying two adjacent lots for that purpose.”

The two lots together are about two acres and were a total of $55,000. The business park along Highway 1 is zoned as light industrial with eight more lots available in phase one of the project. Each lot has access to municipal water and sanitary sewer, as well as electric service and natural gas.