Jamestown approves $500,000 bid for southwest housing infrastructure
Jamestown’s council unanimously backed a roughly $500,000 bid to extend utilities and streets to 15 southwest lots near Louis L’Amour Elementary School.
Jamestown moved one step closer to opening more southwest housing land Thursday, approving a roughly $500,000 infrastructure bid that will extend water, sewer, stormwater and streets to a city-owned addition near Louis L’Amour Elementary School. The Jamestown City Council met in special session and unanimously awarded the work to Border States Paving, the only company to submit a bid.
The project is listed on the agenda as 11th Ave SW Water, Sewer and Street Improvement District #26-50 Mary Young Addition and West Ridge Estates. That formal improvement district will serve residential lots on 11th Avenue Southwest, with the Mary Young Addition sitting north of Louis L’Amour Elementary School and West Ridge Estates nearby along 11th Avenue Southwest, north of 13th Street Southwest.
The city is moving the project ahead as the developer under the Jamestown/Stutsman Development Corp. Residential Lot Development Program, a local financing tool designed to make new housing lots easier to build. The program, funded through the City of Jamestown’s Economic Development Fund, can cover up to 50% of eligible infrastructure costs for residential lot development inside city limits, while the developer covers the rest. It also requires at least five lots and a developer agreement before the work can qualify.
That threshold is met here. The Mary Young Addition plat shows nine lots and an outlot, and West Ridge Estates includes six lots, giving the project 15 lots in all. Mayor Dwaine Heinrich said a developer’s agreement was already in place, clearing the way for the city-backed infrastructure work to proceed.
The southwest project fits into a broader push to add buildable land across Jamestown. On June 24, local housing reporting said 36 new residential lots were going to bid in the city, including 12 lots just north of Louis L’Amour School and 24 lots on 5th Street NE. For Jamestown, the immediate payoff is not finished homes but finished ground: utilities, streets and drainage that can turn raw land into lots ready for builders once the improvement district work is completed and the assessments are handled.
That makes the near-term winner the side trying to get land ready for construction, while the city uses economic development dollars to reduce the up-front cost of opening new neighborhoods. In a city that has repeatedly identified housing supply as a constraint on growth, the council’s vote keeps the pipeline moving, even if it remains an incremental step rather than a full solution.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
