By Vanessa Rohwer
The Sanborn Community Center/ American Legion is slated to be sold. The City of Sanborn proposes to sell the the parcel of real estate to Jordan K. Nieuwenhuis, a native of O’Brien County and a graduate of South O’Brien and Grand View University. Nieuwenhuis is looking to open JK Dance academy/studio in Sanborn in the summer.
Jim Zeutenhorst had shared at the Annual Chamber meeting the idea of the temporary lease or sale of the Community Center. Zeutenhorst presented the City Council with the resolution for the Community Center to be sold at the March 11 City Council meeting. The proposal for the sale was shared with John C. and Ruth Vander Haag, who donated the building to the city to be used as a Community Center with the provision that the American Legion ??????? The Vander Haags’ blessing for the sale was given for a new business downtown. A public hearing for sale of city property was set by resolution during March 11 Council meeting for the next Council meeting on April 8 at 5:00 p.m. before the City Council at the Council Chambers in Sanborn City Hall. Final approval of the sale could be made by the City Council following the hearing. The terms of the proposed sale are as follows: The sale will be for the consideration of Fifty Thousand Dollars ($50,000.00) and other valuable consideration. The City will transfer the property by Quit Claim Deed. The Purchaser shall take said property subject to all future taxes and special assessments. The City will not pay for any abstracting. The City reserves any and all easements. The Purchaser shall take title to the property subject to all covenants of records and other Zoning Ordinances presently in force in the City of Sanborn. The public is invited to attend and comment on the proposed sale. The city is following a process to be able to sell city property.
Lots of Sanborn families are driving to Sioux Center for dance several times each week. Bringing in JK Dance will be great for Sanborn, since the parents bring their kids to dance, and the parents have an hour or more to visit Sanborn restaurants, shop, etc.
Before it was the Community Center A disastrous fire in February of 1914 destroyed half of the business houses in Block Seven on the west side of Main Street. Undaunted, two Sanborn business men purchased the two lots on the southwest corner of 3rd and Main and contracted for a single story brick building eighty feet long. The north half would serve as a grocery store and the south half as a furniture/undertaking parlor. This arrangement continued under several different names in both places of business until 1971, when Chuck Oostenbrug acquired the furniture portion with plans for a serious expansion of his grocery business. In 1985 it was rented by Roger Van Egdom who operated Sanborn New and Used there for a few years before it stood vacant. When the American Legion needed a new home following the razing of their old building on the south end of Main, the empty grocery store was purchased by John C. Vander Haag. Vander Haag then in November 1995 donated it to the city for use as a community center with the provision that the American Legion would be able to utilize the building. After some interior remodeling, an open house with coffee was held in September of 1997. Several years later, the MI’ONO Club commissioned the mural on the structure’s north side. Depicting the 18 stall roundhouse and yards, the painting honors Sanborn’s long railroad history.