Making a big splash in New Hartford
Butler County town of 570 rebounding after tornado, floods
NEW HARTFORD -- This town is bouncing back one step at a time – or, perhaps more correctly, one scoop at a time.
In multiple flavors -- including strawberry cheesecake, which is to die for.
The New Hartford Creamery opened up at the start of June to droves of customers.
“I’ve gained four pounds since you opened!” one patron, Bob Dickson, joked to Mike Lane, who owns the shop with wife Amy.
But the creamery, in a building which once housed a pool hall, may be just the cherry on a multi-layered sundae of what’s in the works for New Hartford.
And Dickson and several others feel it.
Dickson, a New Jersey native and former Waterloo-Cedar Falls restaurateur, is one of a core of community boosters who say this once-flood-prone community of 570, wracked by a tornado 15 years ago, is on the cusp of a resurgence.
“The whole community, just in the last year, seems to be rejuvenated,” Dickson said. “People used to think, ‘it always flooded.’ “ he said, “But it’s really started to turn around.”
In fact, the only water gushing now is coming from a brand new splash pad, where gurgles have been replaced by giggles of happy kids at play.
Several initiatives under way or in the works include.
The splash pad, which opened June 3 adjacent to a park area. Sandy Becker, a retired Dike-New Hartford teacher who headed up the fund drive, says $180,000 was raised over the past four years, even through the coronavirus pandemic. The fundraising included more than 100 individual donors, local foundations and various fundraising activities including bake and craft sales and in-kind contributions. The Max and Helen Guernsey Family Charitable Foundation and the Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa’s Butler County fund were significant donors.
A new restaurant, to be named The Royal Blue, is planned in a former grocery store site downtown now under renovation. It’s anticipated to open later this summer. It’s a project of several partners including Dickson and Greg Schmitz, a former president of Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo.
Development of a co-working space office building for citizens who can work remotely, which is the potential new location of a financial institution; discussions with a prospect are now in the works.
A new housing subdivision, Evergreen Heights with infrastructure already installed.
Establishment of a number of community gardens, all with volunteer labor, on lots where homes were flooded out in previous years. The city is now calling itself “The City of Gardens.” The gardens were developed on flood buyout properties which the Federal Emergency Management Agency donated to the city with the stipulation they be maintained as green scenes. That was concurrent with a major flood control improvement project began in 2008, after the worst of a series of floods. One of the gardens includes a veterans memorial.
Another garden is a community fruit orchard. The town won an online voting contest conducted under Edy’s Fruit Bars “Communities Take Root” initiative. The town won the trees, which were planted by volunteers with assistance from the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation in Anderson, Calif.The construction of a new Dollar General store now underway and anticipated to be completed by fall, which community leads feel will fill the gap of a grocery and hardware store, a need since the tornado and flood.
They’re generous but reasonable steps forward for a town that’s struggled since the 2008 killer tornado that claimed a total of nine people’s lives between New Hartford and nearby Parkersburg, followed by a flood of Beaver Creek. New Hartford was slower to rebound than Parkersburg; as flooding was a common occurrence in the city, but the community is now protected by improved flood dikes.
Census figures show New Hartford’s population dropped from 660 in the year 2000 to 516 in 2010, after the tornado and floods, but has rebounded to 570 now.
“It’s been a big thing for the community, all these little things popping all of a sudden,” Dickson said.
Those developments, plus improvements and programs at the grade school in town that is part of the Dike-New Hartford school district, positions the town to move forward, along with its proximity to Waterloo-Cedar Falls and Black Hawk County — and comparatively favorable property taxes. New Harford’s in Butler County, just 10 miles west of Cedar Falls on Iowa Highway 57.
Being a smaller community, there’s fewer hoops to jump through to make things happen, leaders say. It’s become a place to come to, or come back to, rather than drive by.
“It takes a great group of people to put things together, I think. We get an idea, and we put a plan together, and we go,” said Shawna Hagen, the city clerk.
She approached Sandy Becker about taking up the splash pad project, which Becker did, because "kids have always been my passion."
"We did Super Bowl pizzas; we did a hometown recipe book; we did pies around Thanksgiving; we did a waffle cone breakfast; we did some community meals; homemade pie booths for RAGBRAI" the cross-state bike ride which passed through in 2021, as well as a donor/sponsors board and the sale of memorial benches and planters around the splash pad.
When construction costs went up due to COVID, Becker said, they continued fundraising. Local contractors were mainly used and local businesses and organizations also contributed. Disability accessibility accommodations also were included.
"It was definitely a community effort, for sure," Becker said. A signature feature are the "frog eyes" over the entrance to the pad, which Becker said was Hagen's idea.
"We wanted bright colors and a place that was attractive for families,” Becker said. “I have grandkids that are from six months to 11," and planners installed a variety of features to appeal to all ages of kids. Ground was broken last year and the pad opened during the city's Beaver Creek Days.
"We had a big celebration with free hot dogs and popcorn and balloons," Becker said. Since opening, "We've had a fantastic response. It's just filled with people all the time. It's people from surrounding communities; it's just fantastic."
Family nights are planned Tuesday and Thursday evenings at the splash pad and adjacent basketball courts and play areas, with concessions available and those revenues going back into the park. The pad is also available for rentals for special events.
"I was born and raised here and my community just means the world to me," Becker said. "We have a lot of kids and families that need things to do that aren't expensive. We had four kids of our own. they just need a good place to play; a good place to go and be kids.
"It's been a great experience," she said. "It's just wonderful that New Hartford can come together and do something like this. It's just really exciting to me."
In addition, some economic trends are favoring the city’s growth, said Steve Burrell, a real estate agent for the Evergreen Heights development. He lives in New Hartford but is with Structure Real Estate in downtown Cedar Falls. He’s also a member of the local volunteer fire department.
“We are seeing people continue to look outside of the (Waterloo-Cedar Falls) metro area – on quality of life, classroom sizes, how the school systems operate,” Burrell said. “This school system (Dike-New Hartford) completely renovated every building they had. It’s a point of pride. People are wanting to move into these areas.“
He also noted the local property tax base has increased significantly in the past 10 years. “We have the infrastructure built out; we have the fiber coming through in our new subdivision already,” he said through the telephone company in nearby Dumont.
“Those things continue to allow a community like this to grow,” Burrell said. “These people choose to live in an area like this, where ‘neighbors helping neighbors’ is part of the lifestyle. But we have the access to the broadband, we have the basic services for the community they need. And you’re starting to see these businesses come back. There is a financial institution looking at re-establishing full banking services in this community within the next year. And that’s something we’re really excited about. They see the potential. They see the need based on the population growth, the community growth.” The splash pad is another example.
In addition, the New Hartford Public Library has made a significant rebound since being devastated by the 2008 flood under the leadership Jill Norton. She’s a former Los Angeles school teacher who retrned to New Hartford to be near family. The library has a significant youth collection and colorful reading areas which young people have had a hand in decorating. It includes a significant collection of boks and artifacts of Butler County historian and published author Vopal Youngberg, who passed away in 2011 at age 94.
“These are long-term commitments. This isn’t window dressing,” Burrell said. “This is stuff that shows the community has really turned the corner, is coming back and the people see the value in a bedroom community and still have that quality of life and neighbor-helping-neighbor part.”
Former HCC president Schmitz noted he has two grown children whose families moved back to the area because of their ability to work remotely and the desire to raise families here. They exemplify the kinds of growth the community is seeing. . Schmitz’s son Michael and his wife Lindsey, both of whom work remotely, and their four young children moved back to New Hartford after 15 years in the West Des Moines/Waukee area.
"All the reasons to be down there kind of got shut down for two months," during COVID, Michael Schmitz said. "And then you think about what really matters. We loved the school district town there, but we knew the people here. And for our kids, we wanted the small-town experience.
“I jumped in with two feet to everything, and it's easier to feel like you're making a difference when it's a town of 570 people,” Michael Schmitz said. “I'm coaching kids. I know most of their parents now. It's just so easy to get involved and you see the impact of that."
He's involved in The Royal Blue restaurant venture and sees the need and potential for it. "There's a lot of people like me that are in small towns all day now,” he said.”I know I would utilize a place (restaurant) a couple days a week and I've heard other people say the same thing. And the same with banking services, or an attorney, or insurance services. People are in small towns a lot more than they used to be.
"My great grandpa settled here, and this is definitely home to us," Michael Schmitz said. "But we've got so many young families that have moved in. Everybody's committed. And it's community pride."
He's following the path Mike and Amy Lane took in opening the New Hartford Creamery. Mike said Amy was ready to retire from her job with the Target Distribution Center in Cedar Falls. Mike had been an executive chef for several firms, a former Marine and a stay-at-home dad.
"It just popped in my head to say, 'You know what? Let's open an ice cream shop. This town would love an ice cream shop. We're going to do it for the town.'
After a month in business, he said, "This town could not be more appreciative. That made me happy." And the Lanes live in the renovated upper level at the creamery.
"It's a quiet, cute little town," Mike Lane said. Their shop is drawing people into town from nearby communities who may not have had reason to stop in town before.
More people in town brings more business to town and more people and institutions wanting to do business in town. That’s where the co-working and professional office space building comes in.
“Suddenly all those components necessary to do business, regardless of where you are, are here” Burrell said. “That’s where these small communities can be so viable, in a way nobody anticipated.”
”It's a result of “people with ideas willing to invest a little money, take a chance,” Dickson said, spurred in part, he and Burrell suggested, by the pandemic.
“When you had people spending time with the families again, that’s when they started to look at quality of life,” said. Burrell. "We don’t have to have 50,000 people around us to feel like we’re part of a community. I know more of my neighbors by face, by name than I ever did in a subdivision that has 135 houses in it and we drove past each other every day. It’s just a different mentality. COVID may have brought that back home, so to speak.”
But some of the seeds of that momentum were sown before the pandemic — literally. Carol Chapman, a master gardener, was of the key individuals behind the establishment of New Hartford's series of community gardens. That ongoing work, which began in 2011, gradually built back a sense of pride that carried over into some of the projects being worked on and realized today.
"It's unbelievable we got all this done," said Chapman, who grew up and worked in Waterloo but is now a longtime New Hartford resident. "You could just see the pride starting to build in the community," which prompted residents to spruce up their own properties.
"It's so great to see the possibility of that restaurant opening and hopefully being supported; the creamery is a big hit already; the Dollar General coming here; that's just wonderful,” Chapman said. “If we had a part in what's happening today, that's just the icing on the cake. We just wanted to fill those lots with some needed thing for the community, and it turned into much more...Now look at the people that are stepping up."
"I'd like to think it's like a snowball," Sandy Becker said of the recent succession of events. "It's a pride thing. People are taking pride in our little town. We're one of the fastest growing small towns in Butler County. It's been an uphill climb since the tornado and floods of 2008, It really has. And that has all been a community effort.”
“We’ve just got a lot of people who want to see our town get better, and a lot of people are working together to make our town look better and add things,” New Hampton Mayor Dennis Canfield said. “We’ve got a lot positive enthusiasm within the town. We’ve got the right people in the right places.”
"We will never be a ritzy-glitzy community. That is just not us. But we have what you can't buy,” Carol Chapman said. “You want to give back to others what you received. You don't just find that anywhere you go.
“This community will be at your doorstep when you need help,” Chapman said. “And I've lived that. I know that. You can't put a dollar figure on any of that. This was all because of the people who live here and the heart that they have.”
The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative
Pat, this is the most informative and upbeat story I can recall reading about New Hartford--ever. Excellent reporting!
Is New Hartford no longer flood prone? Looks to me like the it's still in the flood plain.