By JOSH NELSON, Courier Staff Writer
INDEPENDENCE — Thick green and yellow paint covers the old wooden wagon’s sides and wheels.
The entire wagon isn’t much bigger than the back of a modern pickup, but in the early 1900s, it carried the ancestors of the Seamans family and their belongings across the rolling prairie to Rowley.
Now it sits in a white machine shed along U.S. Highway 20 at the Heartland Acres Agribition Center, and it helps tell the story of Iowa’s agricultural history.
Construction on the center is nearly complete; employees are hurrying to finish details before the grand opening April 15.
While the center will have a healthy dose of history, it won’t be mired in the past, said Bruce Neeley, the center’s executive director.
“We wouldn’t use the word museum in our language,” Neeley said.
Many of the exhibits will give people a hands-on approach to how life in the Midwest once was, and how it’s changed over the years. On the main floor will be a livestock area with a chicken hatchery and a fiberglass Holstein cow that can be milked.
Even the overall structure of the main complex — two 1800s-style barns capped at the ends with glass silos — carries that old-meets-new theme. Inside, designers were careful to leave the vast 43-foot ceilings as open as possible like the barns of old, Neeley said. There are some twists, though. Cut timbers used in old Amish barns for support pillars were replaced with laminated wood beams to add extra strength and durability.
The walls have special insulation to keep it warm in winter and cool in summer. There’s also a computer-controlled heating and cooling system that can be programmed to control the climate of each area of the building and an advanced air recovery system to cut back on the energy costs.
“This is the way they would’ve built the barn back then, but they didn’t have that stuff,” Neeley said.
Since the focus on the center is on both new and old agriculture techniques, Neeley said an interpretive display called “Modern Marvels” will be set up to give people a chance to think critically about those changes.
“What we want is hands-on,” he said. “We don’t want to bring things you just look at.”
Among those will be a simulator demonstrating how a modern tractor operates. Another display will feature an 1869 one-room schoolhouse that once sat on the former South Elementary School site in Rowley. The school, which was moved Jan. 9, will demonstrate how schools were conducted on the prairie in the 1800s. The building was donated by the Independence School District.
A renewable energies laboratory and two displays for antique cars and tractors also are planned for the facility.
Heartland Acres cost about $7 million to complete. State community attraction and tourism grants kicked in $750,000 for the project. Other public money came from the city’s hotel and motel tax and the county. The rest came from private donations.
The nonprofit corporation running the center planned it to be self-sufficient by using grants and small entry fees to pay for all its projects and displays. A key factor for that self-sufficiency is its location. The center is within 40 miles of Cedar Rapids and 20 miles from Waterloo.
Already there is some buzz about the facility. The 22,500-square-foot event hall attached to the main complex is nearly booked for 2007. All but two Saturdays are filled, said Mike McGill, Heartland Acres programs manager. The first event will be the East Buchanan School District’s prom on April 28. Only a third of those bookings are from the Independence-area, he said.
The convention hall can hold up to 500 people and be partitioned into three rooms for conventions. Also sharing the same building as the convention hall is a renewable energies laboratory.
“Really we haven’t done any public relations marketing on this yet. It’s just word of mouth,” McGill said.
Tammy Schaffer, executive director of the Independence Chamber of Commerce, said many retailers in the area have been looking forward to the opening of Heartland Acres.
“We’re excited to think that people will now come for the new Agribition center and get to experience the city as a whole,” Schaffer said.
Schaffer said the chamber has teamed up with the Buchanan County Economic Development Commission and the Tourism Bureau to promote tourism to the area using the center as a selling point.
Contact Josh Nelson at (319) 291-1565 or josh.nelson@wcfcourier.com.
