Gothic House Visitor's Center receives funding

By SCOTT NILES Courier staff writer

May 05, 2006 11:34 pm

— ELDON — What would have been “later” improvements for the American Gothic House Visitors Center will now be able to be done sooner thanks to the Iowa Legislature.
Two days ago, members of the American Gothic House Committee were told they will be receiving $250,000 in state funding for expansion of the project.
“That is a third of our budget,” said member Priscilla Coffman. “We are just speechless.”
She said the committee had originally decided to do some improvements later down the road once they received more grant money.
“We wanted to finish the trail from town that leads out to the Gothic House and we wanted to pave the road and make a paved parking lot,” she said.
These infrastructure items, Coffman said, were things the committee did not have the money for.
“We were OK with the idea of having a gravel road and parking lot. We said we could deal with that,” she said. “But, now we can actually do these projects.
“This is a financial God-send. We were just going to start the center and we were going to do the parking lot and trail and road as a different phase. This will make a lot of things happen that would have been put on hold.”
The money is not a guarantee and has yet to be signed by Gov. Vilsack, but state Sen. David Miller, R-Fairfield, said it looks like the deal will go through.
“I think it would be unlikely for the governor to veto it,” he said.
Though it is not clear exactly how the money can be used, Miller said the improvements the committee hopes to make sound like a reasonable way to spend the money.
“I think there is enough flexibility in the language that they should be able to use it for that,” he said.
Miller said the money will be granted after July 1 because this funding will come out of next year’s budget.
Linda Durflinger, another committee member, said it is such a relief knowing the committee will be able to move forward with the project.
“This helps us out tremendously,” she said. “This will make things go so much smoother.”
Durflinger said the next step in the project is to take bids on May 16 for the construction of the center.
“Now we can do what we need to make the center the best it can be,” she said.
Scott Niles can be reached at (641) 683-5360 or via e-mail at sjniles@mchsi.com.