Irish Hospital Apartments
Located in Forest City, Iowa, Irish Hospital Apartments demonstrates how adaptive reuse can preserve historic buildings while contributing to the continued vitality of downtown communities.
— Quick facts
Project overview
A 9-source capital stack brought together public funding, grants, and tax credits to make the adaptive reuse project possible.
Eight new apartments have been fully occupied since the building reopened in November 2022, providing much-needed housing in downtown Forest City.
The building’s story: once a hospital, then a law enforcement center, the vacant building was given new life as multifamily housing.
— The story
From Vacant County Asset to Workforce Housing
The building started as a hospital in Forest City, Iowa, then spent years as a law enforcement center before becoming owned by the county and sitting vacant with no clear future. When Redevelopment Resources took on the adaptive reuse, the real challenge wasn't construction, it was capital. We assembled a nine-source stack: the county contributed the building itself plus a grant, the city and state added further grants, and two competitive state tax credit awards closed the remaining gap.
Over two years, the building was reimagined as multifamily workforce housing. It's been fully occupied since November 2022, proof that a historic and vacant building can still work, with the right financing and the right patience. The next project already underway uses the same adaptive-reuse playbook: a former elementary school in Pleasantville, IA.
The Result
The nine-source capital stack closed, and the building became eight units of workforce housing — fully occupied since it opened in November 2022. What was a vacant, county-owned building with no clear future is now the housing downtown Forest City needed.
It's also a direct example of how Redevelopment Resources works in this space — not just advising on the capital stack, but taking on the adaptive reuse itself, hands-on, start to finish.
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