Expansion of local businesses highlights need for additional rental properties

A community cannot thrive and grow without people to make it grow. Unfortunately, Kimball has not seen much, if any, growth in the past 10 to 15 years. Kimball City Administrator Daniel Ortiz explained the importance of having a wide spectrum of housing in the Kimball area.

Kimball is in need of more housing. If Kimball is to grow and thrive it’s important that it be full of places for a variety of people to call home. At one point, Kimball had a large number of residents. Some 6,000 people called Kimball home. However, over the years that number has dwindled and Kimball is now a mere fraction of what it used to be with a little under 2,600 residents.

“Kimball is able to sustain a larger community, it has the infrastructure to be able to accommodate that. Our downtown area, you look down there and several businesses that used to be thriving are now closed down, boarded up. That is due to the fact that our population has now gone down so that we can’t sustain a downtown of our size,” Ortiz said.

Kimball has the potential to house more people. It’s not as though it is a ghost town. According to Ortiz, after he spoke to Castronics, Clean Harbors, GRI, and the hospital, he found out that several of there employees could use housing locally.

“Numbers that I have heard from Castronics and Clean Harbors are that about 50 percent of their employees commute from out of town. It’s logical to assume that if there was an opportunity for people to live here that they would choose to do so,” Ortiz said.

One of the issues Ortiz highlighted was a lack of rentals. People who are new to a community oftentimes want to get a quick affordable place until they are settled in the community. Some people also choose to live in an apartment while they are actively seeking out more permanent housing.

Apartments, condos, and town homes are needed especially for the younger generations who find themselves in the area due to a new job.

“They aren’t going to make such a big decision as buying a home without having lived in the community first, especially if they are starting a new job and there is still a certain level of uncertainty with how the job will work out. They won’t make a huge financial commitment if they aren’t certain that they’ll be here for more than a year or two. So that’s when it would be very beneficial to have apartments so that they can sign a six month or year long lease,” Ortiz said.

These younger people can use the time they are living in an apartment to learn about home ownership and how to get financed for a home.

Smaller rentals are not the only type of housing that is needed in Kimball. Ortiz emphasized the need for a broad spectrum of housing in the area. Especially homes for families to really entice those who might commute in from one of the surrounding communities.

“I think we need a little bit of everything. We need multi family, we need housing for the workers out at Castronics and Clean Harbors and housing for the professionals in the community. However, we also need housing for the workers in the area perhaps more of your standard two-bedroom, two-bath homes. For instance, you have a worker who just wants to provide a roof over his family’s head, and he needs a home that is low maintenance because he’s working six days a week. He doesn’t have time for a fixer-upper,” Ortiz said.

If low maintenance housing is a need, that means new housing is a need. New housing lessens the need for large fixer-up projects and allows a family to worry about other things rather than house repair.

Most of the homes in Kimball are rather old and outdated. This also drives up the need for newer housing. Once people are familiar with upgraded features they tend to want homes with that already built in so they won’t have to add it.

“Also whether it be someone who was from here and left for school and came back, or someone moving into the community from a larger city, they’re going to want more of the modern amenities in a home that they plan to purchase. For a young family that’s starting out, that might be coming in from the front range, they’ve seen the sub divisions in fort collins and denver and they know they want those modern features,” Ortiz said.

Ortiz recognizes that the need for new housing is great, that Cabela’s is growing, local businesses have employees that would move if modern housing were available, and for any more growth Kimball must attract outsiders. Sometimes attracting more people requires finding a niche market to play into.

“There is also a niche for homes that are larger, high-end homes we’ve talked about trying to develop homes out at the golf course because we’ve seen communities such as Sidney and Gering that have done housing on their golf courses and al that has filled up. That’s fairly common with golf courses around the country that have put homes up on and around the course there is a niche there for people who want those kind of amenities and the close proximity to the golf course, perhaps they’re retired or something of that nature,” Ortiz said.

With the popularity of Kimball’s golf course growing, having homes on the course would be beneficial. It would bring in bigger spenders that would put money back into Kimball.

Aside from wanting to break into the niche market of golf course homes, Kimball just needs newer models of homes.

“Some homes in the area date back as far as the 20s, 40s and 50s. You have a lot of homes where people have raised their families and then they when they pass on or move into a home, we have homes that are older and have not been upgraded and often tend to require substantial repairs,” Ortiz said.

Not a lot of people want an outdated home, especially once they have been afforded the luxuries of modern housing. Whether those modern amenities are the decor or the ability to operate several electrical appliances at once, that’s what people looking to buy homes want.

Kimball does not have to means to build a substantial amount of housing. A developer will be needed to advance Kimball’s housing needs. It’s difficult to find a developer that knows Kimball’s history and still wants to take a chance and sees potential. As far as whether or not Kimball can attract a “ready to go” developer, it already did.

“We did have a developer here and they were given a sour taste by members of the community and they left and decided to go to another community. People might not know that a person is a potential developer so they need to be aware that what they say about Kimball is heard. They have to remember that it is important to speak on behalf of the community and the region rather than their own personal interests. We already have hurdles to jump over in order to move forward with this we don’t need someone out there throwing out land mines and destroying all our hard work to help Kimball Prosper. ,” Ortiz said.

Despite this most recent set back Ortiz continues to look for ways to make Kimball appealing to developers. Currently Ortiz is working on getting together a way for the city to complete a comprehensive plan. This plan will provide an up to date look at the community and then certain things can be addressed thereafter.

“We’ve actually applied for a grant in order to do a updated comprehensive plan for Kimball, our last comprehensive plan was done in 2002, so we’re 12 years behind on that and a lot has been done in those 12 years. So it’s important to do a comprehensive plan and include a housing study as a part of that,” Ortiz said.

While developing housing in Kimball may seem difficult, it can be done. As long as the community all work toward the same goals, such as improving Kimball, future developers should be here to stay.