Mount Trashmore can be seen from the former Sinclair site, where demolition is complete. City leaders see great potential for future development on both sites. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

All is quiet now at the site of the former Sinclair meatpacking plant.

Nearly the entire flood-and-fire-damaged collection of blighted buildings is gone, demolished and hauled off — some 100,000 tons of debris — across the Cedar River, buried at the top of the landfill affectionately called Mount Trashmore.

What remains at the Sinclair site now is a mostly level 30 acres of possibility with an open view like never before of the towering landfill, its seeded sides as green as a golf fairway, across the way.

Spend a few minutes at the Sinclair site with the Cedar River just off to the side and it’s no longer difficult to imagine a future for what had been two of the city’s iffiest spots, the sprawling former meatpacking plant and the landfill.

“What strikes you is the vast potential of the Sinclair property in the long term for the community,” says City Manager Jeff Pomeranz. “There’s a lot of discussion about how that property could be used in the future.”

City Council member Justin Shields, who helped convince the City Council back in 2006 to purchase the Sinclair property for redevelopment, reports that he has been on the Sinclair site in recent days with developers who wanted to see first hand if the site held any promise for their future plans. Shields is escorting another developer onto the property next week, he says.

“People in the private world are looking at that for potential redevelopment now that the property is cleared off,” he says.

Shields envisions some kind of mixed-use, residential-commercial development on the site, while Pomeranz imagines part of the Sinclair ground eventually turning into a park and ball fields along with residential development.

In the near term, the city plans to seed the Sinclair site to add some green color to it. Additional environmental work also needs to take place there. And the city’s proposed flood-protection system calls for an earthen levee along the property’s river side to protect it.

Any redevelopment will take time, likely years, Pomeranz says.

As for the landfill, Shields laughs when asked if he noticed it during his recent tours of the Sinclair site.

“You can’t hardly help but notice,” he says. But in a good way, he adds.

“You get a much better idea of how large Mount Trashmore is as you look at it now from Sinclair,” Shields says. “But I look at it as an asset. It’s going to have grass and trees on it, and I think it will be an attractive site. It’s going to be a good neighbor.”

Karmin McShane, the executive director of the Cedar Rapids/Linn County Solid Waste Agency, assures as much.

“It is quite a vista,” suggests McShane. And, she adds, from both views — from the top of the landfill looking back at the city; and from the Sinclair site, looking up.

The agency has closed the Mount Trashmore landfill forever once already. However, the agency reopened it with special permission from the state of Iowa to take in all the debris from the June 2008 flood. It is still taking in debris and will for some time as more flood-damaged homes and commercial buildings are demolished as part of the city buyout program, McShane says.

Only 10 acres at the very top of the landfill, she reports, is still open for work, with the other 62 acres now fairly well established in grass.

In the future, McShane says the landfill will feature trails up to the top of the hill, while City Council members Pat Shey and Tom Podzimek envision the hill as a ski slope in the winter. The two tried it out a few winters ago.

Fred Timko, a board member of the non-profit Southside Investment Board and the developer of Bottleworks loft condos in New Bohemia next to the Sinclair site, says the board’s focus has been on the redevelopment occurring along Third Street SE in the heart of the New Bohemia entertainment and cultural district.

Of the Sinclair site, he says, “We’re just glad it’s getting cleaned up and will be available.”

Timko, who is also chairman of Point Builders in Cedar Rapids, says the city’s idea is for Third Street SE to feature arts, culture and entertainment all the way from the new Convention Complex at First Avenue East to the heart of New Bohemia at 12th Avenue SE and a few blocks beyond into the Sinclair site. He says it would be nice to have an “anchor” on the Sinclair site to offset the Convention Complex as the anchor on the other end of Third Street SE.

Timko also imagined a pedestrian and bicycle bridge across the river from the Sinclair site to the existing Cedar River Trail that passes right by the landfill.

City Council member Shields says he promised back in 2005, when he was first elected to the council, to try to do something about the Sinclair property, then in private hands, much of it vacant and all of it well beyond its prime. A year later, the City Council agreed to purchase it for $4 million, with the Hall-Perrine Foundation paying half the cost.

“I think it’s a valuable asset to the city and we were able to get it,” says Shields. “Now all we got to do is get it developed into a good, positive whatever it might be.”

The Sinclair buildings, no doubt, would still be standing in limbo today but for the flood of 2008, which overran the mostly abandoned plant, which also sustained a couple of fires.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency deemed the plant an “imminent” threat to health and safety and agreed to use disaster funds to pay for the demolition. The cost of the demolition — $21 million — is still a point of dispute between FEMA and the city. Last week, FEMA said it would pay $14 million of the cost while the city’s Pomeranz said the debate with FEMA continues.