A lightning bolt of complication has hit the city’s plans to build a new public library to replace its flood-ruined one.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has concluded that it can’t now financially support the city’s chosen site for the new library – now occupied by TrueNorth Companies across Fourth Avenue SE from Greene Square Park – because it is too expensive based on a “benefit-cost analysis” tied to the National Flood Insurance Program requirements, Mayor Ron Corbett said this afternoon.

Building a new library on either of two other sites that the city had considered for a new library also is too costly, the mayor said FEMA has concluded.

Furthermore, he said FEMA has now suggested what the Cedar Rapids library board long ago rejected — that the city demolish the existing library on First Street SE and replace it on the site with a new library built one-foot higher in the flood plain than the old one.

“From FEMA’s review, it’s cheaper to meet the National Flood Insurance Program’s requirements by doing that,” the mayor said.

Corbett said FEMA’s “benefit-cost analysis” has determined that about $18 million in FEMA funding is available to build a new library on the site of the old library.

The agency has put the cost to build on the TrueNorth site at about $24 million, something less for a second site, the Gazette Communications site, and less, about $20 million, for third site, the Emerald Knights site.

Corbett went to FEMA’s office in Des Moines on Wednesday with Allan Thoms, interim city manager, to discuss the library.

On a phone call during his drive back to Cedar Rapids, he expressed frustration but said there was no reason to panic.

The Kansas City, Mo., regional office, which will review the matter, hasn’t yet gotten information from FEMA officials in Iowa, he said.

Corbett emphasized that the city’s library board, library staff, TrueNorth and the city have invested a lot of time and money to prepare to build the library on the TrueNorth site and to have TrueNorth renovate and occupy the old library building. He didn’t imagine that plan now would be abandoned, he said.

The city has at least two options: It can appeal as part of a relocation process or it can submit a new request to build an “improved” project on a site different from the site of the old library.

Corbett said it was likely that less FEMA money for library construction would be available than earlier thought for the project, and he said there also now is a chance that the project would face a construction delay.

For its part, FEMA issued this statement: “FEMA, in concert with the state, the city of Cedar Rapids and others, is pursuing all options to resolve the library issue within the FEMA/State Public Assistance policy guidelines. What options specifically may be available is what is being pursued among all parties.”