CALLAWAY – Tuesday morning marked an enormous step for the progress and development of the Village of Callaway. An immense coordinated effort between Callaway, the Custer Economic Development Corporation (CEDC), the Central Nebraska Economic Development District (CNEDD), and many others resulted in the breaking ground on the first of hopefully many affordable homes in the village.
Thirty community members were on hand to celebrate the occasion; those present included Lieutenant Governor Mike Foley in his twilight at the position, State Senator Tom Brewer, who currently represents District 43, and Jerad Reimers, a representative from Congressman Adrian Smith’s office.
The project had been in the works since 2020 and includes two houses already completed in Broken Bow, and has pulled resources and minds from within Callaway and beyond.
Morgan Pearson of the Nebraska Department of Economic Development praised the ongoing projects as a shining example of what development in rural Nebraska should look like.
“This is exactly what the Department of Economic Development wants to see: communities working together to benefit from each other. It’s great to see the CEDC work with so many different communities to have such success.”
The collaborative effort goes beyond acquiring the funds for housing, which came through a $500,000 grant from the Nebraska Affordable Housing Trust, but, as Ken Pitkin of Callaway’s Chamber of Commerce illuminated, requires securing everything that goes into, around, and underneath it: the land, utilities, and building materials; the efforts of which are all selflessly devoted to ensuring a flourishing Callaway.
“The Masons family started this idea; they bought this alfalfa field and said, ‘Let’s build housing,’ and the Village Board said, ‘We’ll put the infrastructure in, the electricity, and the water.’ It was all laid without a single house having been built, but with a belief in the future.”
Half of the funds to purchase the lot for the project were put up by the Callaway Development Corporation, a roughly 40-year-old private investment group, with the remaining half matched by the CEDC.
The house is the third in a set of ongoing, unfolding developments around the county. With the colder months approaching, the groundbreaking is largely symbolic, though construction is expected to begin this spring, with total project completion, including sale to new owners, anticipated by the fall of 2023.
