The look of downtown Hamburg, Iowa is about to change forever. Plans are underway to demolish a handful of the historic brick buildings along Main Street because of last year's flooding.
“If one of them collapsed the possibility of someone being killed is enormous,” Public Works Director Alan Dovel told WOWT-6 News.
He expects it will cost about $1.5 million to bulldoze the buildings. State flood-recovery funds will cover just over a million of it.
“We found that about five of them were structurally were compromised due to the amount of water that sat in them,” Dovel says. “It’s definitely going to change what downtown main street of Hamburg looks like.”
Megan Benfiel manages a pharmacy in downtown Hamburg and is hopeful the town won't be hurt by the change.
“Most of the building they're planning to tear down has been vacant for a long time so I don't see a large impact to the community as far as a loss of services,” Benfiel told WOWT-6 News.
She thinks the town has a chance to turn the teardown into a good thing.
“Hopefully there will be an opportunity to put up potentially smaller buildings, single-story. Instead of what we're used to as our historic buildings come down, with the opportunity of new businesses coming in.”
Hamburg is also dealing with another concern. The town’s efforts to bring back its high school fell short late last month with the state voting 'no' to that request. Officials were hoping it would help bring people back to the flood-stricken town. Now high school students will continued to be bused to near by Sydney, Iowa.
(Photo: WOWT 6 News)