The existing Cedar Rapids Public Works Facility at 1201 Sixth St. SW. The city has concluded it will be cheaper to tear down this building and build a new facility, rather than renovate the structure. (Cliff Jette/The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — More than three years after the 2008 flood, decisions about the Public Works Facility are coming to the fore.

This week, city officials toured the former crane manufacturing plant — a 300,000-square-foot behemoth at 1201 Sixth St. SW — as they and project consultants made the case for demolishing the existing structure and building a new one rather than renovating.

Ryan Companies US Inc. is the city’s project manager, and Marc Gullickson, president of Ryan’s Iowa operations, said the company has spent more than a year analyzing the pros and cons.

“In this particular case, (renovation) is not the least expensive thing to do, and that’s the overall priority,” Gullickson said. “… If it’s cheaper to build new, we have to be able to tell (the city) that.”

He said a new building is not only less costly than renovating, but a new building will be cheaper to operate.

“So there are financial savings on two tiers,” Gullickson said.

Ryan’s analysis puts the cost of a new building at $29.9 million vs. $31.5 million to renovate the existing building. Factored into both is $1.3 million in federal disaster money already spent to return office employees to the post-flood building.

Sandi Fowler, special assistant to the city manager, said the old industrial building’s layout — with dividing walls and numerous steel pillars — complicates maintenance, storage and cleaning of public works’ fleet of about 500 pieces of equipment.

An I-beam is misshapen from public works' vehicles hitting it while maneuvering around the building, an old crane-manufacturing plant. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

Dents in pillars are a testament to the difficulty in maneuvering dump trucks, road graders and other heavy equipment in and around the building’s pillars. Much time is spent each day packing equipment inside for the night and then backing it out for use the next day, city officials and consultants emphasized.

Fowler said a new building will be designed to fix those problems and provide better use of space so vehicles can more easily circulate in the building. The new building also will allow the city to store its entire fleet of public works vehicles and equipment on site. Previously, the fleet has been stored at five sites.

The city, she said, had already outgrown the facility before the flood. She cites one of the facility’s tenants, the Solid Waste & Recycling Division, as an example. In 1988, the division had 13 trucks to pick up garbage. Today, the division has 50 trucks to pick up garbage, recyclables, yard waste and leaves, she said.

In 1980, the city was 55 square miles in size, and today it is 75 square miles, she said. With that growth has come an increase in equipment. The city also needs room to store Hesco barriers and tiger dams, which provide the city with an extra level of temporary flood protection, Fowler added.

A new public works building also will have room for the city’s parks and recreation operation, which now is housed at 3601 42nd St. NE. The city’s information technology department would take over the 42nd Street NE building.

The cost analysis comes down in favor of a new building, in part, because the city would spend $2.4 million to find a new home for the parks and recreation department if the building is renovated and another $5.46 million for the fleet maintenance division, for which there would not be room in the existing Public Works building. Another half-million dollars would purchase property for buildings for parks and recreation and some of the fleet operation.

Like now, about 200 office employees will work in the new building and another 200 on-street employees will be dispatched each day from the facility.

City Manager Jeff Pomeranz said much of the expense of a new building is being paid by funds from the federal and state governments. Most of the $6 million in local funds is money the city had set aside to make repairs on the building before the flood.

The city sets aside $300,000 a year for maintenance of the existing building but will need only half as much each year in the first 10 years in a new building. The city also believes it will save $80,000 in utility costs in the new building.

The proposed new building will be 307,000 square feet, including 46,000 square feet of office space. The two-story office building will go up along 15th Avenue SW at the back of the 19-acre site, with the new vehicle maintenance and storage facility behind it. An existing building, which has housed city garbage trucks, will remain.

Construction is slated to start in summer or fall 2012, with completion in 2014.

Related articles

• Public Works plan: Lay out details (thegazette.com)
• C.R. looking to demolish Public Works building (thegazette.com)