Newton, Iowa, was the home of the Maytag Appliance Manufacturing company, with generation after generation of residents producing the company’s famed washers and dryers. Although the longstanding factory no longer exists, the Maytag legacy remains rooted in the community.
Company founder Fred L. Maytag even supervised the construction of the Hotel Maytag in 1926, which was the first hotel west of the Mississippi to install air conditioning. The prominent five-story building, which had fallen into deep disrepair and sat mostly vacant for years, has recently been restored into 36 affordable and nine market-rate apartments on the upper floors. A movie theater and a cafe that were part of the original building also have been renovated.
The new Historic Hotel Maytag Apartments and Event Center is one more step in the community’s comeback after the factory shut down more a decade ago.
“It has restored interest in downtown Newton,” says Jack Hatch, principal of Iowa-based Hatch Development Group, which acquired the building, the largest in downtown, from the city in 2017.
As part of the effort, Hatch’s team was also able to restore a 3,500-square-foot ornate ballroom that had been converted into a rat’s nest of small offices in the 1980s.
The apartments are fully leased, with the affordable homes serving residents earning up to 60% of the area median income.
To fund the $16.2 million project, Hatch assembled multiple sources of financing, including state and federal low-income housing and historic tax credits. The small town of Newton committed approximately $3 million to the project, a sign of the building’s importance to the community.
The development was recognized as the best multifamily project in the state in 2019 by the Iowa Finance Authority.
