An historic four story, brick apartment building in Cedar Rapids has been restored and reopened as 15 affordable living units. The Brown Apartments building at 1234 Fourth Ave SE in Wellington Heights is 95 years old. An official ribbon cutting was held Thursday, May 21.
Tag: Cedar Rapids (page 6 of 8)
Last week FEMA officially decided the City of Cedar Rapids, not the Veterans Memorial Commission, will be the recipient of $20 million plus in federal funds to repair the flood damaged Veterans Memorial Building on Mays Island, which housed City Hall since its construction in 1927. Since I worked with the Veterans Memorial Commission at the building the past three summers and through the flooding, I’ve heard the argument from both sides. The Veterans Memorial Commission acts as the building’s landlord, which City Hall occupied “free of charge” without paying rent, but the Commission itself is a city department.
The building was constructed as a memorial to veterans and to house offices and meeting space for veterans groups, the Coliseum, Armory in the basement, and one floor for City Hall temporarily. According to veterans, City Hall was only intended to be in the building for the first five years before finding a new permanent location. That never happened, and since then, city offices expanded to most floors in the building.
Recently the City began a six to nine month public input process regarding a possible new shared facility with the public school district, currently operating out of a trailer village by Kingston Stadium. The original thought of a co-location included Linn County as well, but they declined to participate in order to move forward with repairing the County Administrative Office Building. To me, it seems silly for the City to be spending this amount of time to study a co-location with only the school district.
Since the Veterans Memorial Building is historical, it is required to be repaired, so the City might as well use space they already have available. Moving mechanical and electric equipment to space on the second floor would minimize damage from possible future flooding, and the basement levels could remain essentially unfinished as they are now gutted. City Hall, Veterans Memorial Building, where it stands is significant to the city’s history and identity. Centrally located, it is symbolic of the compromise between the east and west and unites all four quadrants of the city.
I stopped by the building this week to see the guys from the summer. Clean up work is finished and nothing but bare structure remains in the basement. Interior walls were removed on the mezzanine level so it is open to the basement from one side of the building to the other. The building is essential sitting empty now until work begins on it’s renovation, now one step closer with FEMA’s decision on funding.
> Hundreds of photos, which I helped take, of damage to the building immediately after the flood
Downtown Progress
Most of downtown is pretty much cleaned up now and many major buildings and businesses are back up and running. Plenty of first floor spaces remain unfinished, likely waiting for new tenants to refinish to their needs. Sidewalk damage is still apparent on many streets. Large areas of sidewalk brick that were washed out on 2nd Street SE, have been patched temporarily with concrete.
On the south end of downtown and in the New Bohemia area, damage from the flood is still much more visible. A few buildings in New Bohemia – CSPS, the Cedar Rapids Peace Center, and a group of storefronts (photo) at 3rd St. and 12th Ave – are being worked on, but many remain unfixed. A few open lots are visible where some houses have already been demolished. See all downtown photos from this week here.
Downtown Parking
The most noticeable change downtown is back-in angle parking (photo) on many streets, instituted after the flood. I believe most of these on street spaces were permit spaces only, as most of the parking meters are still absent. On Monday evening, Dennis Burns of Carl Walker parking consultants, presented, free of charge, strategies to improve downtown parking to support downtown economic development, at a public meeting at the Crowne Plaza. I attended with about 50 others, mostly downtown businessmen and women.
Dennis discussed two successful systems in Boise and Boulder and explained how their parking facilities and policies support economic development and help finance downtown improvements. Overall he stressed the importance of aligning the city parking operations with downtown economic development organizations. He pointed out that adding on street angle parking is an inexpensive and easy way to instantly increase parking capacity.
New downtown library likely
FEMA declared this week the flooded CR Public Library hit the 50 percent threshold meaning FEMA would help fund total replacement of the current building instead of repairing it. This is critical to the library that desires to return to downtown but without future flood risk at the current site, located less than a block from the Cedar River. A special request will need to be made for FEMA funding to build the new library at a different location. According to the Gazette report, cost to repairing the library is estimated at $17 million compared to $24 million for a new library at a different site in downtown.
It’s unclear how long off the new library could be, considering no officially decisions have been made, but another opportunity for new development and improvement downtown. I’m interested in the redevelopment potential of the current library site – especially with the new courthouse going up and proposal for Great America Building 2 across the street. I always felt the low, plain library building would hold this area back from its urban potential.
Since the flood the CR Public Library has been operating out of its Westdale Mall branch location. Last month a new, larger temp location called “The Bridge” opened in the former Osco Drug store at the mall. Gazette city government reporter Rick Smith reports on his blog, the library intends to open a temporary location in downtown this summer at 221 Third Street SE.
Federal Courthouse
Ground breaking has yet to take place for the new federal courthouse on the south end of downtown but that day is approaching. First Street was closed at the beginning of March between 7th and 8th avenues. The new courthouse will span two blocks from the river to 2nd Street SE. The site (photo), formerly property of Mid American Energy has been cleared and sits vacant waiting for construction to begin.
Today I participated in the second of three community workshops for the Cedar Rapids Neighborhood Planning Process for the River Corridor Redevelopment Plan. The focus of today’s workshop was on transportation and connectivity, and land use in the redevelopment plan. Individuals from Sasaki Associates, the Boston design firm selected last year (pre-flood) to develop a riverfront redevelopment plan, were there to present different scenarios and facilitate discussion.
The first breakout session was to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of three scenarios presented on transportation, connectivity and open space. All scenarios were based off a tentative plan for a greenway / flood protection system. The second breakout session considered land use and locations to focus housing and business revitalization. My table was fairly diverse – one older man, a retired woman formerly a planning consultant, two women from Time Check, one of their daughters; and our table leader, a planner with the City Community Development Department.
Turn out looked pretty good, maybe 150-250, but I could be way off. I saw a lot of familiar faces from City Hall and in the business community. I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions and hearing what other citizens had to say about the schemes, as well as offer my own input. Despite being six hours long, it seemed to go by pretty quickly and was actually really pretty fun for me. I look forward to participating in the next meetings I’m able to make it, as I’ll be returning to Ames tomorrow for school.
The next meeting will be Tuesday, March 31, from 6pm – 9pm, at the Crowne Plaza, for scenario evaluation and determining a preferred scenario. The last of three workshops will be April 25. An action plan will be confirmed at a May 5 meeting and will be presented to the City Council on May 13. I encourage anyone and everyone from Cedar Rapids to get involved in this process.
> Cedar Rapids River Corridor Redevelopment Plan
> Cedar Rapids Neighborhood Planning Process
> Sasaki Associates: Cedar Rapids River Corridor Redevelopment Plan
CR Transit maintains its presence at Lot 44 at 12th Ave SE and 2nd Street SE, for transfers and now dispatch. Trailers have been set up to provide an indoor waiting area with vending, public restrooms, and office for dispatchers.
Eight used 1992 TMC RTS buses were acquired in December and put in to service earlier this year – replacing buses lost in the flood. These buses debut the new green livery design and CR Transit branding. Older buses have not changed except the “CR Transit” lettering has been added to some of the newer Thomas Dennis SLF’s (but not all of them…?).
A few of the new RTS’s had bike racks installed, which was a previous plan to add bike racks to most of the bus fleet.
Four brand new 35 foot Gillig Lowfloor buses are due to arrive in April, an order unrelated to the floods. Additionally, CR Transit will be getting four new large buses and one medium duty bus with funding from the economic stimulus package.
See all new photos on Flickr.
First Street SE in Cedar Rapids between 7th and 8th avenues will be closed permanently starting Monday as work on the new federal courthouse gets underway. The completed building will sit on a two blocks site between 2nd Street SE and the river. First Street will end at 7th Avenue in a new civic plaza space. The building design is a collaboration between William Rawn Associates of Boston and OPN Architects of Cedar Rapids.
The decision was made this week to raise transit fares in Cedar Rapids to help make up for the city budget shortfall caused by the summer flood and current economic situation. The Gazette’s Rick Smith reported on his city government blog that regular fares will rise to $1.25 from $1, and reduced fare will increase from 50 cents to 60 cents. There was a proposal to eliminate Saturday service, which averages only 1300 riders each weekend, but the City Council rejected that proposal. Fares provide only about 15 percent of the transit operating costs.
Like cities across the country, Cedar Rapids has made a wish list of projects vying for federal funds through President-elect Obama’s proposed national economic stimulus package. Top funding requests include: $17 million to repair the flood damaged public library or $21 million for a new facility, $35 million for a new bridge over the Cedar River between C Street SW and Otis Road SE, and $155 million for the long planned extension of Highway 100 (Collins Road) around the western edge of town to Highway 30. According to the January 8, Gazette report, the city is requesting money for a variety of other projects including local road improvements, wells, sewers, and buses, among others.
The City of Cedar Rapids held its second open house for the River Corridor Redevelopment Plan on Thursday, Sept. 11, presenting potential flood control options developed by Stanley Consultants along with the Army Corps of Engineers. Twenty-two flood management tactics were evaluated for their effectiveness in flood reduction, cost, and amount of time required to implement them. The tactics ranged from large multi-billion dollar diversion channels to just increasing capacity of the river through dredging and flood storage at certain points. Even the unthinkable, removal of Mays Island, was examined – results showing it would only serve to reduce flooding by two percent. From the study results, three main strategies for future flood management were generated:
Option 1 – Tall, permanent flood walls and levees at the river’s edge with removable walls in downtown. (require 100 acres, cost up to $900 million)
Option 2 – Move option 1 flood protection a few blocks away from the river, except downtown where removable flood walls would be used right at the river edge. (require 250 acres, cost up to $1 billion)
Option 3 – Move flood protection even farther from the river using smaller levees and removable flood walls to create a large greenway along the river. (require 700 acres, cost up to $1.2 billion)
The city will meet with Sasaki Associates, the city’s consultant for river redevelopment and formerly chosen to design a pre-flood river walk, to come up with a final flood management plan by mid-October to submit to the Army Corps of Engineers and then go from there. It is likely the plan will take parts of all three options presented at the Thursday open house.
Grand Forks has been looked to as a precedent since the beginning of the flood, so many are imagining a similar post-flood greenway park and flood wall system for Cedar Rapids. Following the historic Grand Forks flood in 1997, it took almost ten years to implement their plan, but is now a major attraction for the city. Cedar Rapids’ flood protection system will play a huge role in the future of the city, but must also respect its past as extraordinary change is made over the next decade.
> River Corridor Redevelopment Plan – Open House No. 2 Presentation (PDF)
> Great Grand Forks Greenway website
> Greater Grand Forks Greenway – Wikipedia
Cedar Rapids’ planned new courthouse has been bumped up on the priority list for construction by the Judicial Conference of the U.S. Courts Executive Committee, in lieu of severe flood damage to the existing 77 year-old courthouse. Senators Tom Harkin and Chuck Grassley have been working the past few weeks to get the courthouse moved up, which has been delayed for fifteen years while other courthouse projects have been expedited. This is certainly good news for Cedar Rapids and downtown. The 8-story building that will be elevated above the 500 year flood plane will enhance the city’s skyline and be a very visible sign of the city’s triumph over the flood. According to the Gazette, construction could begin as early as next year.
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