Architect's rendering, exterior of new Cedar Rapids Convention Complex

CEDAR RAPIDS — Easy to miss Wednesday in Mayor Ron Corbett’s State of the City updates on $300 million in city flood-recovery building projects was a cost jump of more than $25 million in the city’s hotel and Convention Complex projects.

Making the climbing costs tough to notice in the annual mayoral speech was Corbett’s announcement of good news: that the city had secured a new naming rights deal with U.S. Cellular on the city’s arena and new convention center that could bring the city $3.8 million over 10 years. U.S. Cellular Center had by paying the city $150,000 a year to put its name on the arena, now under renovation.

At the same time, though, the mayor made note to the 520 people who paid to eat lunch and hear his speech at the League of Women Voters’ event that the cost of the $25 million-plus hotel renovation would now climb to more than $40 million and the cost of the $75.6 million Convention Complex project, which started out with an estimate of $67 million early on before design, would jump to $85 million.

The new numbers came in a flurry of numbers and project synopses at the luncheon event that covered the library, Paramount Theatre, central and west-side district fire stations, City Hall, public works building, bus depot, riverfront amphitheater and animal control facility.

Later Wednesday, John Frew, the city’s project manager on both the hotel and Convention Complex projects, put the new projected cost of the hotel renovation at $44 million.

Frew said the new, higher number factors in the $2.1 million figure to service debt incurred on the project before the hotel is open and generating revenue and is able to cover debt costs. Another $3.2 million covers the funds the city used to purchase the hotel in March 2011 from the hotel’s creditors. The city has decided that hotel project budget should cover those costs, Frew said. Another $750,000 added to the project goes to a required “rainy-day fund for operations.”

But much of the jump in the hotel budget numbers, he said, is coming for two reasons: to bring the hotel up to the standards that come with having secured the DoubleTree by Hilton brand; and to put the city in position to sell the hotel in the future.

Frew said the city likely could have done a much less complete job of renovation if had secured a lower-caliber brand for the hotel. But at the end of the day, it would have still had a 30-year hotel it couldn’t sell.

“You have to upgrade the hotel’s systems, you just can’t change the bed sheets,” Frew said. “There is virtually nothing in this building, inside or out, that won’t be touched or improved.”

He said the building’s mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems are being replaced as well as the roof, boiler and window systems, not to mention every customer item in each of the rooms.

Making the kind of improvements to the hotel and securing the DoubleTree by Hilton brand will allow the hotel to charge higher room rates and bring in more revenue to cover the debt payments on the increased project costs, Frew added.

Of the now $85 million figure for Convention Complex project, the mayor noted that the city has obtained $35 million in federal funds and $15 million in state I-JOBS funds for the project. He puts the city’s investment now at $32.4 million when private funding is added. He said the federal and state help makes the city investment “look like a bargain.”

Corbett acknowledged that convention centers don’t make money, but they “do bring money to town.” He noted that one event alone, the girls state volleyball tournament, brought $18 million of spending into the city over the last 10 years.

Frew said the cost jump at the Convention Complex is less than it appears. He said the most-recent project cost figure, $75.6 million, did not factor in the cost to issue bond debt for the project nor did it include Frew’s fees, about $4 million. Frew‘s firm, Frew Nations Group, serves as both project manager and construction manager. Bids on project work, including electrical and mechanical work, came it about $3 million over budget, he added.

As for the U.S. Cellular naming rights deal, Corbett called the deal the biggest one ever for the city.

The previous arrangement with U.S. Cellular expired on June 30, 2011, about the time the city closed the arena for renovation. The new contract starts July 1, 2013. The arena and convention center are slated to be open by then.

Sunflowers grow in the flood damaged Time Check neighborhood in northwest Cedar Rapids on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008. (Amanda LaRae Larkin/The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — Work is about to begin to turn two acres of empty lots where demolished homes once stood into a series of urban gardens.

The Matthew 25 non-profit group plans an urban garden complex as the first step of what’s called the Ellis Urban Village. It’s located along F Avenue and Fourth Street NW in the Time Check neighborhood.

An open house to show off design concepts for the gardens is planned for 11 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Matthew 25 offices, 225 K Ave. NW.

Dale McBurney lives next door to the urban garden plots and grew some vegetables in the ground after a neighbor’s home was demolished. He’s a fan of the proposal and said the nutrients left behind by floodwaters should make the area good for garden produce.

“One of my wife’s rose plants was dying — she thought it had had it. But after the flood the thing came back and was growing like crazy,” he said.

Organizers hope that proves true for all the urban garden land, because the project will work on a subscription basis. People can buy a summer’s worth of fresh vegetables for an upfront $400 payment. Those living in the flood zones of the Time Check and Taylor Elementary School neighborhoods can buy a share for half price.

Matt Mayer of Matthew 25 said the group envisions enough produce to take care of 25 subscribers for most of the summer.

“We’ll definitely give people their money’s worth. It averages $20 a week — unless you’re a neighbor, then it’s $10. Our goal is to give you about 50 percent more (worth of produce) than that,” Mayer said.

A group of 10 AmeriCorps Vista service workers will start digging the initial layout on March 10.

Larry McKinnon (left) uses a massager on the neck of Arnie Juhl of Cedar Rapids as Juhl gets a haircut Thursday, Feb. 9, at McKinnon's Squire Barber Shop in Cedar Rapids. Also pictured are Cedar Rapids councilman Chuck Swore (second from right) and Jim Poorbaugh. McKinnon rebuilt the business, located several blocks from the Cedar River, after the 2008 flood. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

You’d think you’d find a ready-made fan club for flood protection at Larry McKinnon’s barbershop.

After all, the strip of blue tape 10 feet off the floor marks the high-water point when the Cedar River ripped through McKinnon’s small business at 1601 Ellis Blvd. NW in June 2008.

Although the afternoon lineup of regulars recently gave McKinnon credit for quick, hard work mucking out and reopening his building, sentiment for a friend doesn’t change their opinions on taxes and flood protection.

“I’ll help him put this place up on stilts so I can get my haircut,” said Floyd Davie, 80, “but I’m not voting for the tax.”

McKinnon — whose shop is in the middle of the Time Check and Harrison Elementary School neighborhoods, both savaged by floodwaters — said he will vote yes March 6 to extend the 1 percent local-option sales tax for 10 years. The money would help build a flood-protection system on both sides of the river.

“I’m for it mainly because I won’t be able to survive here if I don’t have flood protection,” said McKinnon, a mild-mannered 76-year-old with no plans to retire.

Most of his customers are older, and some of them live or have lived in the vicinity of the river. Less than a month before the election, they still have questions about the proposed tax extension, about the 2008 flood and about flood protection.

Does the city really need flood protection? Wasn’t the Flood of 2008 an aberration? Does the city really have a flood-protection plan? Can we count on the city to use the money for flood protection if the sales tax is extended? What if the federal and state governments don’t contribute funds, too?

The river is just four blocks away, and what’s between the back of the barbershop and the river is something of a no-man’s land. It’s a place in limbo, waiting for somebody to determine its future. There are a few renovated homes. More boarded-up houses wait for demolition. Empty lots abound, and forlorn trees mark spots where flooded homes once stood.

An afternoon debate

McKinnon is barber to three City Council members — Mayor Ron Corbett and at-large council members Chuck Swore and Don Karr. All three are proponents of the tax extension for flood protection.

On this day at McKinnon’s barbershop, Swore was holding court.

Arnie Juhl, 80, told Swore that the 2008 floodwaters climbed much higher than they would have because a train bridge near Eighth Avenue SE collapsed into the river, holding back water.

Swore disagreed. Hydrology experts, he said, concluded that the bridge might have raised water levels an additional 6 inches. That mattered little when the water climbed 12 feet above the city’s historic high-water mark, he said.

Jim Poorbaugh, 76, who owned a locksmith’s shop next door in past years, wanted reassurance that the tax extension for flood protection would not take effect until the current 1 percent sales tax, which has been used for flood recovery, runs its course in 2014.

It’s an extension of a tax, not a tax on top of a tax, he was assured.

Poorbaugh suggested that the risk for future flooding might not be remote, as farmers continue to add tile to their fields to make more land available for crops and as developers continue to pave ground.

“That’s why we’re having higher floods. Water has no place to go but into the river,” he said.

Willie Holub, 75, whose house on Ninth Street NW was flooded, said he’s lived near the river for years but never had a flooding problem until 2008.

“I’m not a gambler, but the percentages are (that another flood of 2008 magnitude won’t occur),” Holub said.

Holub repeatedly said he can’t vote to fund a flood-protection system when the city hasn’t provided a plan for it. Davie agreed.

It’s an assertion Swore has heard a lot, and he couldn’t contain himself: “It’s unfair to say, ‘I’m going to vote no because you don’t have a plan.’ Our plan is to put in flood protection,” Swore said.

“It may be unfair, but if it’s lacking concepts or plans, I will vote no,” said Holub.

Swore said the city’s flood-protection plan will surely change as the time arrives for the Army Corps of Engineers to design a flood-protection system for the west side of the river, as it is now doing for the east side.

“I’m telling you it won’t be exactly as it’s been preplanned,” Swore said.

More public input promised

McKinnon recalled the extensive amount of work and money the city has put into developing its plan, an effort that involved consultants, the Army Corps of Engineers, city officials, the City Council and public input.

Linda Seger, president of the Northwest Neighbors Neighborhood Association and a frequent visitor to McKinnon’s shop, told Swore that most flood victims were too busy cleaning their flooded homes and businesses to participate in the process in the first months after the flood.

“I think we need another chance for public input,” said Seger, who supports flood protection and is a member of the pro-extension residents’ group, Cedar Rapids Extended Sales Tax.

The city’s preferred flood-protection plan — which has an estimated price tag of $375 million and which city officials have called a basic Chevy plan, not a Cadillac plan — provides west-side flood protection and more east-side protection than the Army Corps of Engineers’ east-side-only plan.

Swore promised more neighborhood meetings so residents can help modify the 3-year-old plan before a final design is set. Design and construction can’t come until the city has revenue, however, Swore said.

Rebuilding hinges on protection

Nick Nates (from left) and Kurt Marble climb ladders as they work on Justin Koster's home Tuesday, Feb. 14, in the Time Check neighborhood of Cedar Rapids. The home sits atop a ground-floor garage. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

Holub and Poorbaugh like the city’s idea to replace the flooded and demolished Time Check Recreation Center with a new one on Ellis Boulevard NW, at the site of the former YMCA and Boy’s and Girls Club, just down the street from McKinnon’s barbershop.

The spot, though, sits in the current 100-year flood plain, which means the city would have to go to greater expense to elevate a building on the site — should it choose to put the recreation center there, Swore said.

Likewise, other spots along Ellis Boulevard NW and between it and the river sit in the 100-year flood plain and likely won’t see new building unless there is flood protection.

“There are some very aggressive plans to try and help Ellis Boulevard, but if we don’t have flood protection, forget it,” Swore said. “If there is no flood protection, how in the world are we going to convince anybody to spend money to develop Ellis Boulevard?”

Swore is voting yes March 6. So are Seger and McKinnon. Poorbaugh might. Davie won’t. Holub almost surely won’t, and Juhl isn’t decided yet.

“It’s no advantage to me, though it’s probably needed,” said Juhl, who lives on high ground away from the river. “You got a little different perspective if you don’t need it.”

Skeptic Holub has been back in his home — outside the 100-year flood plain on Ninth Street NW and three blocks from McKinnon’s barbershop — since the six-month mark after the 2008 flood. Still, he has not risked finishing his basement. Until now.

“It’s been three years now, and I can’t stand it,” Holub said. “I want to see it redone. So I’m taking another chance.”

Related articles

• Will flooded areas of Cedar Rapids be redeveloped?
• One step forward (thegazette.com)
• All’s quiet on the LOST front (thegazette.com)
• Most Cedar Rapids candidates favoring flood protection system (thegazette.com)
• Iowa Senate panel approves bill creating flood mitigation fund (thegazette.com)

A new city map details a list of 1,383 properties — most residential, with about 200 commercial — that the city has or could choose to acquire through the flood-recovery buyout program. To date, the city has spent $77 million in the buyout effort, most of it from federal disaster dollars, city officials reported last week.

For now, the city is focusing its redevelopment energy on 439 of the properties, because these properties sit outside the 100-year flood plain and outside an area set aside for the proposed flood-protection system.

At the same time, Flood Recovery Committee members Don Karr, Justin Shields and Ann Poe are looking at 358 additional buyout properties that are in the 100-year flood plain and some that may not be in the construction zone when a flood-protection system is built.

Many of these properties sit in the heart of the Time Check neighborhood, next to Czech Village and in New Bohemia across the river. They will be prime spots for redevelopment if the city builds a flood-protection system.

Such a system would remove these properties from the 100-year flood plain.

Joe O'Hern, Cedar Rapids flood recovery and reinvestment director

“Redevelopment gets a lot easier and a lot more feasible for those properties (now) in the 100-year flood plain,” said Joe O’Hern, the city’s flood recovery and reinvestment director.

Jennifer Pratt, a planner in the city’s Community Development Department, said future building is restricted on buyout properties in the 100-year flood plain that were purchased with federal Community Development Block Grants.

One way to release the restriction is to show that a property no longer is in the 100-year flood plain. Development also can be allowed if a property owner can show local, state and federal authorities why a development can’t be built other than in the 100-year flood plain. Once built there, the development must comply with flood-plain regulations, she added.

The city’s buyout program also includes 146 properties in the 100-year flood plain purchased with Federal Emergency Management Agency funds. No building can take place on these properties, which will become part of a greenway along the river.

Related story

Time Check barbershop is a microcosm of persistent doubt around the flood

Floodwaters of the Cedar River rise around the Linn County Courthouse and City Hall as the river nears its crest in Cedar Rapids shortly before noon on Friday, June 13, 2008.(Liz Martin/The Gazette)

The effects of extreme weather are still evident in Cedar Rapids, nearly four years after flooding devastated the city’s core.

A new report released Thursday by Environment Iowa warns that severe storms will be more common in the future in Iowa and the rest of the nation.

The report, In the Path of the Storm: Global Warming, Extreme Weather, and the Impacts of Weather-Related Disasters in the United States, shows every county in Iowa was hit by a weather-related disaster at some point between 2006 and 2011.

Noticeably absent from an interactive map that accompanies the report are the floods of 2008 in Linn and Johnson counties.

At the time, the flood – which affected 10 square miles of Cedar Rapids and caused at least $2 billion in damages –  was considered the fifth worst natural disaster in the nation’s history.

Jillian Hertzberg, Environment Iowa Federal Associate, said the report used data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“It has to do with the designation by FEMA,” Hertzberg said.

FEMA categorized the flood as a severe storm, which appears as such at the county-level of the map.

State climatologist Harry Hillaker said historical data on many types of storms is not well-documented.

“It’s difficult to judge if we’re having more severe weather,” Hillaker said. “It’s just very hard to really know.”

Iowa’s deadliest tornado happened in 1860 in Camanche, with 115 deaths in Iowa, but overall, Hillaker said comparisons of storms are difficult to make, especially with few, or variable, record-keeping systems.

FEMA designations can also be variable, he said, because disaster declarations sometimes can be political, with more coming during election years.

The report was released as the Obama administration finalizes new carbon pollution and fuel efficiency standards and as the Environmental Protection Agency is poised to develop carbon pollution standards for coal-fired power plants, which the group cites as the largest single source of pollution fueling global warming.

Alliant Energy spokesman Ryan Stensland said the company started preparing for eventual changes to emissions rules from the EPA more than two years ago.

Stensland said Alliant has already installed equipment at some of its plants and is working to install the equipment at others, though not every power plant will undergo significant change.

Alliant also is in the process of diversifying its power generation by adding wind power, more natural gas fired generation and cleaner coal, he said.

“Customers should know we are committed to supplying reliable, cost-effective power,” Stensland said in an email. “Cleaner power is more expensive and will increase the cost of electricity over time.”

Environment Iowa’s report highlighted last year’s Missouri River flooding, which caused an estimated $200 million in crop losses in western Iowa alone.

The report also details the latest science on the projected influence of global warming on heavy rain and snow; heat, drought and wildfires; and hurricanes and coastal storms.

Key findings from the Environment Iowa report include:

• Since 2006, federally declared weather-related disasters affected all 99 Iowa counties
• In 2011 alone, federally declared weather related disasters affected Iowa counties housing more than 600,000 people.  Nationally, the number of disasters inflicting more than $1 billion in damage (at least 14) set an all-time record last year, with total damages from those disasters costing at least $55 billion.
• Nationally, federally declared weather-related disasters have affected counties housing 242 million people since 2006—or nearly four out of five Americans.
• Other research shows that the U.S. has experienced an increase in heavy precipitation events, with the rainiest 1 percent of all storms delivering 20 percent more rain on average at the end of the 20^th century than at the beginning. The trend towards extreme precipitation is projected to continue in a warming world, even though higher temperatures and drier summers will likely also increase the risk of drought in between the rainy periods and for certain parts of the country.
• Records show that the U.S. has experienced an increase in the number of heat waves over the last half-century. Scientists project that the heat waves and unusually hot seasons will likely become more common in a warming world.
• Other research predicts that hurricanes are expected to become even more intense and bring greater amounts of rainfall in a warming world, even though the number of hurricanes may remain the same or decrease.

(David Scrivner/SourceMedia Group)

Cedar Rapids residents will cast their votes March 6 on extending Linn County’s one-percent local-option sales tax (LOST) to fund flood protection, but what’s in it for other county residents?

The current one-percent LOST brought in $31.9 million in the fiscal year that ended last June 30. Cedar Rapids’ share came to $19.1 million.

Voters in Alburnett, Center Point, Central City, Ely, Mount Vernon, Lisbon, Palo, Springville, and Walker can sleep in. Those cities’ voters approved the extension last year, so they’re not on the ballot this time. Coggon, Prairieburg, and Bertram have adopted the tax in perpetuity, so they’re not voting either.

The state Department of Revenue allocates revenues from the one-percent tax under a formula spelled out in the Iowa Code: 75 percent by population, the balance in proportion to each jurisdiction’s property tax levy between July 1, 1982 and June 30, 1985 (yes, it’s that long since the formula’s been updated, although it was modified for the March 2009 vote).

If the tax passes countywide but fails in an individual voting jurisdiction, that jurisdiction won’t receive the proceeds.

Fairfax, Marion, Hiawatha and Robins are in a single metro-area voting bloc with Cedar Rapids. Cities that do not pass the local-option sales tax in a metro bloc that, overall, adopts the tax may collect the tax but must use the money only for purposes stated in that city’s ballot language.

Outside of Cedar Rapids, Marion and rural Linn County have the most specific ballots.

Marion, which received just over $4 million in fiscal 2011, would earmark 70 percent of new LOST proceeds for street and sewer work, the balance for other community projects, a change from last year’s proposal (30 percent tax relief, 50percent  streets/sewers, 20 percent other projects.

A $54.5 million spending plan adopted by the city council spells it out more specifically – right down to the city block for the first several years of the tax.

“We want people to know as specifically as we can,” said Marion City Manager Lon Pluckhahn. “It’s a transparency issue.”

It’s a planning document, but “it’s going to be pretty close to binding,” said Marion Mayor Allen “Snooks” Bouska.

The council will name a nine-member citizen committee to ensure spending follows the plan.

“They will go through any of the spending, all that money will be attributed to what we said it was going to be, and if it isn’t they will find it,” Bouska said.

The city plans a series of informational meetings on its LOST plans before March 6. Bouska said he’ll point out that LOST funds will enable Marion to pay cash for street and utilities work instead of issuing bonds, saving $7 million in interest costs and allowing 26 years’ worth of work to be done in 10.

Linn County supervisors approved a ballot for the county’s unincorporated area allocating half its share to the secondary road system and 25 percent each to property tax relief and conservation projects. Money for tax relief would be applied against the county’s rural levy, currently $3.71 per $1,000 assessed value.

Applied to the current levy, the formula would reduce the rate by $1.08 per $1,000.

Approved 51 percent-49 percent in 2009, the current LOST funded the county’s rural flood-recovery projects through March 2010. Since then, it’s gone to secondary road and bridge projects – $5.2 million worth last year, more than double the regular secondary road budget.

Passing the extension would mean rural roads are “heavily subsidized by Cedar Rapidians and others,” said Supervisor Brent Oleson, R-Marion. “If it doesn’t go through, the road budget for planned construction for the next 10 years will be cut in half, and they’ll still pay the tax if it passes in Cedar Rapids.”

Supervisor Linda Langston, D-Cedar Rapids, said that if rural voters vote down a levy that passes countywide, they’d still pay the sales tax but would receive no funds.

“And I might add that if metro area passes it is almost impossible to get a LOST on the ballot again for Linn County for 10 years,” Langston wrote in an email.

The extra money would mean rural roads would be paved and seal-coated sooner, and the county would stay ahead of its bridge-replacement schedule, County Engineer Steve Gannon said.

Deputy Conservation Director Dennis Goemaat said the department’s share, conservatively figured at about $1.2 million a year, would fund improvements in county parks.

“It’ll benefit anyone in the county,” Goematt said.

Hiawatha’s ballot is unchanged from last year’s: “any lawful purpose,” with up to 10 percent for property tax relief.

“If we use the LOST tax for a street instead of bonding for it, it is in fact property tax relief,” said Mayor Tom Theis.

Hiawatha gets just under $1 million a year from the current option tax. Theis said the city’s used it to buy a rescue unit for the fire department and an SUV for the police canine officer, and “we’ve done improvements in the parks, we’ve rebuilt a couple streets.”

The Fairfax ballot’s “any lawful purpose” ballot is also unchanged.

“(As) one of the fastest growing towns in Iowa we kind of leave it open like that,” said Mayor Jason Rabe. “That way we can kind of say, ‘hey, what part of town do we need to address?’ It keeps us more flexible.”

Fairfax, which received more than $226,000 in LOST funds over the most recent fiscal year, has used its share to repaint the city water tower, replace an old stretch of water main, buy a new snowplow, and build storage for road salt and sand.

“If it were to pass for the 10 years, we would probably count it more as a revenue stream,” said Rabe. Among the potential uses through 2015 could be a curb-and-gutter upgrade of the town’s oldest streets.

Casey Luke of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with Rinderknecht breaks concrete away from rebar in the basement of the Veterans Memorial Building as renovation continues on May's Island on Monday, Feb. 13, 2012, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Renovation has begun after a long demolition period following the 2008 flood. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

Reconstruction work finally began this month on one of the iconic downtown Cedar Rapids buildings devastated by flooding in 2008.

The Veterans Memorial Building, which served as city hall for decades, was cleaned and stabilized after the high water in June 2008.  But it literally sat for years awaiting the rebuilding decisions. Construction work began around Feb. 1, with little or no fanfare.

Mike Jager, executive director of the Veterans Memorial Commission, said contractors began some interior demolition shortly after Christmas.  But workers shifted into the actual rebuilding process about a week and a half ago.

The work to restore the former city hall to a useful life is an $18.5 million project. FEMA is contributing $15.3 million of the cost with state I-JOBS and Jumpstart funding contributing another $3.2 million combined. Jager said currently there are no local option or property tax dollars involved in the rebuilding of the former city hall building.

After barely ten days of work, there is really nothing dramatic to see yet, but Jager said those who come back in a few months should see a significant change.

“Sometimes, day by day, it’s kind of a slow drip process,” Jager said, adding “But over time, 60 to 90 day intervals, there will be real, tangible consistent progress.”

Jager said any progress was welcome after a two year running battle with FEMA over the budget and building decisions. The federal disaster agency didn’t sign off on a plan until last November.

About 20 percent of a refurbished Veterans Memorial Building will house programs aimed at helping veterans.  That will include a first-time physical therapy area.  Filling the building beyond that is an open question.  With the city moving most offices to the old federal courthouse, Veterans Memorial won’t ever return as city hall.  But Jager said the commission is looking at other governmental agencies as well as nonprofits that could make use of the available space in the 106,000 square foot building.

“Perhaps Linn County, perhaps the courts,” Jager said.  “We’re also looking at a mix of private tenants.  We don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket the way we were before (with city hall).”

Jager said it will probably take four or five months of work to have something to show potential tenants.  That’s when the real “selling job” to fill a rebuilt Veterans Memorial Building will begin.

The commission is hoping to have a substantial portion of the building finished by Veterans Day in November to host a public event.

Video of the Jeans' n Classics show is shown on the scoreboard, Saturday May 28, 2011 at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Cedar Rapids. (Becky Malewitz/The Gazette)

Just how snazzy a video scoreboard does the city need at its 10-year-old Veterans Memorial Stadium minor league park? And who should pay for it?

Those are the emerging points of debate among the city’s Veterans Memorial Commission, the City Council and the stadium’s principal tenant, the Cedar Rapids Kernels’ baseball team, as they look to the maintenance needs of the stadium — which cost $16 million to build and opened a decade ago this April — over the next seven years.

A City Hall study — which the commission will begin to review at its Monday evening meeting — lists as a priority the replacement of the stadium scoreboard at an estimated cost of $550,000 to $600,000, Mike Jager, executive director at the commission, said on Monday.

However, Jager said the commission’s top priority is completing the $19 million renovation of the flood-damaged Veterans Memorial Building on May’s Island, the work on which is only 10 to 15 percent complete. Also a top priority is the development of programs in the building to serve veterans, he said.

“We’ve got a few things on our plate right now,” Jager said of the commission. “I don’t think putting $600,000 toward a scoreboard has been on our priority list. From the Kernels’ point of view, it’s a very important priority.”

In terms of issues at the stadium, Jager said the commission and the City Council have agreed to focus on fixes to the infrastructure and on improvements demanded of the stadium by minor league baseball.

In the current fiscal year, for instance, the council has set aside $100,000 for repairs, which include upgrading the field lighting, replacing backstop netting and replacing some sections of sidewalk and some carpeting. In the previous year, the council spent $150,000 to fix some chronic water drainage issues. And in future years, the council has expressed support for additional annual spending for the park’s capital needs. Some of the needs are apt to include replacing the outfield grass, fixing additional drainage problems and making concrete repairs in the seating area.

But then there is the scoreboard.

Jager and Gary Keoppel, president of the Kernels’ board of directors, on Monday expressed different views about what responsibility the commission and city had to provide a scoreboard for the park and what responsibility the Kernels might have.

Keoppel said the agreement put in place a decade ago calls for the city to cover the scoreboard costs.

He added that the “industry standard” for the life cycle of an electronic scoreboard like the one at Veterans Memorial Stadium, which features a large video screen, is about 10 years. That’ the reason, he said, that the company with the stadium’s scoreboard maintenance contract can no longer find parts for the existing scoreboard’s decade-old electronics.

“We’ve been limping along the last few years,” Keoppel said.

In initial discussions among the city, commission and ballclub, the city floated the idea that the Kernels consider imposing a 50-cent or 75-cent surcharge per ticket to help defray the cost of the new scoreboard, Jager said.

Keoppel said a ticket surcharge was a bad idea.

“We’ve tried to make it family-affordable and family-friendly and to put on a surcharge is not in keeping with that,” he said.

Jager said minor league baseball requires a scoreboard that keeps score, lists hits, runs and errors and tells the crowd who is at bat and what inning it is.

“Everything else, is that a requirement?” he asked.

Jager noted that the scoreboard with video screen is as much an advertising vehicle for the Kernels as a scoreboard, the revenue from which the ballclub keeps to pay its bills.

Keoppel didn’t disagree that the advertising on the scoreboard makes the club some money.

“It’s how we pay our lease (to the city),” he said.

Cedar Rapids firefighters extinguish a fire of a structure in the 1400 block of Second Street SE early Monday, Feb. 13, in southeast Cedar Rapids. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — Firefighters are investigating a suspicious overnight fire here.

Flames consumed a home in the 1400 block of Second Street SE that had been damaged by the 2008 flood. Crews arrived at about 2:30 a.m. but believe the fire was going well before they received the emergency call.

No one was injured. Also, Cedar Rapids Fire Department officials said, no nearby structures were damaged by heat from the fire.

A person a block away at Tornado’s Grub and Pub, 1400 Third St. SE, called firefighters after seeing heavy smoke pouring out of the building, fire officials said.

Authorities call it suspicious because the house, whose construction dates to 1888, has been vacant since the flood and no utilities were hooked up to the building.

Fire officials said firefighters extinguished the blaze only from the house’s exterior because the house previously was damaged by the flood and was completely involved with fire.  Firefighters said the home was the 27th fllood-damaged building to go up in flames since water inundated the area.

If you have any information about the fire you are asked to call the Cedar Rapids Fire Department at (319) 286-5200.

Interstate 29, which connects Omaha, Neb., with Iowa at the Mormon Bridge, was flooded at the Iowa side June 14, 2011. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is planning to spend $1.8 million to repair the flood-defense network around Omaha.

The repairs being made around Omaha are part of the work being done along the Missouri River to prepare for spring. Last year’s historic flooding along the river damaged many of the levees and drainage ditches and other structures along the river.

The corps says this $1.8 million contract will repair several of the drainage structures around the city and Eppley Airfield.

The contractor will also inspect Omaha’s flood wall to determine what other repairs are needed.

May's Island in Cedar Rapids flooded by the Cedar River on Thursday, June 12, 2008 as seen from the air. (Perry Walton/P&N Air)

CEDAR RAPIDS — Mayor Ron Corbett and a City Hall delegation won an initial victory at the Iowa Statehouse on Wednesday in their effort to find state funds to help Cedar Rapids build a flood protection system able to protect against a repeat of the Floods of 2008.

A key caveat with the legislative proposal — which would create a $30-million-a-year, multiyear fund to help communities statewide with flood protection — is that it requires recipients to match state funds with local ones.

The proposal, which has to make its way through the Senate and then House and be approved by the governor, puts the city in the same spot it was in a year ago: Asking state lawmakers for flood-protection funds on the eve of an election to extend the local-option sales tax. The extension of the 1 percent tax for 10 years is needed to generate the local matching funds required to secure state and federal money for flood protection, city officials say.

“What I’m thinking is that I’m hopeful that voters will be supportive of a sales-tax extension when it comes up next month,” Corbett said. “So we have our local match so we can draw down on these state resources.”

Cities also can use property-tax dollars rather than sales-tax dollars as a local match, but Corbett said raising property taxes wasn’t practical.

A year ago, Corbett often spoke about Cedar Rapids flood protection as a “three-legged stool,” with federal, state and city funds needed to build it and keep it in place. Nothing has changed with the metaphor, the mayor said.

“You have to have local skin in the game,” he said. “That’s the only way these things get built.”

The current 1 percent sales tax for flood recovery doesn’t end until June 30, 2014, so a 10-year extension for flood protection would not begin to be collected until July 1, 2014. Corbett said that gives the city two more legislative sessions to secure state funds if the initiative fails this year.

However, Corbett was optimistic that the Legislature and the governor both would approve some kind of mechanism to help communities throughout the state repair or bolster their flood protection systems. Disastrous flooding in 2011 in western Iowa hopefully will help build a strong enough coalition to get the measure passed, he said.

Subcommittee members Sens. Bob Dvorsky, D-Coralville, Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, and Bill Dix, R-Shell Rock, voted 3-0 to send the measure to the full Senate Appropriations Committee, which Dvorsky heads.

Cedar Rapids’ preferred flood protection program has a price tag of $375 million — $200 million for east-side protection, $175 million for west-side protection — with a system of levees, flood walls, removable flood walls, gates and pumping stations.

To date, the Army Corps of Engineers has approved a partial flood protection project for most of the east side of the city at an estimated cost of $104 million, 35 percent of which must come from local or state funds.

Hogg said the Senate bill provides a mechanism for the state to become a partner to invest in “fairly intensive” infrastructure improvements that provide an essential public purpose.

Dix said it recognizes that the state has a role to play in restoring economic vitality and preserving jobs in communities hard hit by natural disasters that have a ripple effect on surrounding areas.

Those included 40 applicants whom FEMA said improperly received $229,057 in benefits in Cedar Rapids and Palo and seven applicants whom the agency said improperly received $61,433 in benefits in Iowa City and Coralville after the June 2008 floods.

On Monday, FEMA will send out new letters to those people, and to some 89,000 people nationwide, informing them that they can seek a waiver of FEMA’s earlier “recoupment” effort, the agency’s regional office in Kansas City, Mo., reported on Thursday. The new letters are going to those involved in declared disasters between Aug. 28, 2005 and Dec. 31, 2010.

The waiver letters come after Congressional action in December 2011 setting out conditions to allow the debt waivers.

To approve a waiver, FEMA first must conclude that the improper payment did not involve fraud, presentation of false claim or misrepresentation; that the payment was made due to a FEMA error; and collection on the debt would be unfair or cause serious financial hardship.

Some of those who received letters in Iowa last spring already may have successfully appealed the earlier request to repay money. Others may have moved and will not receive the waiver letter, and they are asked to call FEMA’s Recoupment Helpline at 1-800-816-1122 between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m., Monday through Friday.

Russ Shelton (left) carries his seven-year-old, 30-pound cat, Sam, across Ninth St. NW after rescuing the cat from his flooded home Saturday, June 14, 2008, in northwest Cedar Rapids. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

UPDATE: Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett says he believes prospects are better this session for a cost-sharing approach toward flood protection and rebuilding efforts in Iowa communities to clear the Legislature and get signed into law.

“I think we have a really good chance this year,” said Corbett, a former House speaker, after a Senate panel voted unanimously Wednesday to advance a flood-mitigation program that establishes a nine-member board to scrutinize applications. The program also allows qualifying local entities to capture a share of the growth in their sales tax collections to match state and federal financial assistance.

For starters, Corbett said, there are more communities that have been hit with weather-related problems – most notably towns and cities along the Missouri River and the city of Dubuque – which gives Senate Study Bill 3130 a broader statewide application rather than just being perceived as legislation that primarily would help Cedar Rapids rebuild from devastating 2008 flooding along the Cedar River.

The measure approved by a three-member Senate subcommittee would establish a 10-year state flood mitigation program capped at $30 million annually in state sales tax revenue. It would provide a maximum award of up to $15 million a year for any qualifying single community to match local and federal funds that communities would spend on flood protection projects.

The legislation, which would authorize the issuance of bonds, covers the construction and reconstruction of levees, embankments, impounding reservoirs, or conduits that are necessary for the protection of property from the effects of floodwaters. Those efforts may include the deepening, widening, alteration, change, diversion, or other improvement of watercourses if necessary for the protection of such property from the effects of floodwaters.

Sen. Bill Dix, R-Shell Rock, said the bill recognizes that the state has a role to play in restoring economic vitality and preserving jobs in communities hard hit by natural disasters that have a ripple effect on surrounding areas.

Corbett said the proposal would allow Cedar Rapids to capture a portion of future growth in the sales tax revenue from the Cedar Rapids-Linn County area to pay for a $375 million system of levees, concrete walls, and removable flood walls and pumps that would be built in phases. Improvements on the city’s east side of the Cedar River are projected to cost $105 million without enhancements the city prefers, with the federal government picking up 65 percent of the price tag but improvements on the west side totaling up to $185 million would have to be funded entirely by local and state sources.

“We need the state support on that,” the Cedar Rapids mayor said.

Next month local voters are being asked to extend a five-year, local-option sales tax approved in 2009 for another 10 years to carry the dedicated flood-mitigation funding stream through 2024, Corbett said.

“We believe if we get that passed and we have the state bill that passes along with the federal government that we’ll be able to build our project,” he said.

Corbett said backers of the measure made a tactical error last session in tying Cedar Rapids’ local matching money to a sales tax vote that failed, sinking the legislative effort in the process. He also said he has discussed the concept with Gov. Terry Branstad, who generally is supportive but hasn’t seen all the details of the proposal.

Sen. Rob Hogg, D-Cedar Rapids, said the Senate bill provides a mechanism for the state to become a partner to invest in “fairly intensive” infrastructure improvements that provide an essential public purpose.

Demolition started on the flood-damaged Time Check Recreation Center on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012, in northwest Cedar Rapids, Iowa. According to Joe O'Hern, flood recovery director, the city is forming a task force to help find a site for the new Northwest Recreation Center. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

A new, second-try City Hall task force convened Thursday and expressed no interest in building the city’s new west-side recreation center on Harrison Elementary School property as a way to get the school off a school-closing list.

Instead, the recreation-center task force members made it clear that they want to focus their attention for a new $3-million-plus recreation center on spots along the main traffic artery through the northwest neighborhoods, Ellis Boulevard NW.

Such a placement will fuel “the reflowering” of the Ellis Boulevard commercial strip and the Time Check and Harrison neighborhoods along with it, City Council member Monica Vernon, a task force member, said.

How can the city expect the private sector to risk building along Ellis Boulevard NW if the city isn’t willing to do so? council members Don Karr and Chuck Swore, both task force members, added.

Sufficiently strong, in fact, was that focus on Ellis Boulevard NW that the task force said it remained open to building the new facility on elevated ground in the 100-year flood plain, an idea that a first task force and city officials earlier had rejected because of extra cost.

Vernon, though, noted that city demolition contractors have moved and continue to move plenty of dirt as part of the city’s flood recovery and so the cost to do it at a spot along Ellis Boulevard might not be so great.

“We put people on the moon, maybe we can figure this out,” Vernon said.

Even so, task force members also made it clear that they are waiting to see if voters on March 6 agree to extend the city’s 1-percent local-option sales tax for 10 years, revenue from which will help pay to build a flood protection system on both sides of the river. Property now in the 100-year flood plain, such as much of it along Ellis Boulevard NW, will no longer be at that level of flood risk with a flood protection system, task force members noted.

Dale Todd, co-chair of the task force and a former City Council member, said he wanted a see what city-owned properties along Ellis Boulevard NW were in the 500-year flood plain and outside the 100-year flood plain.

The eight-member task force is comprised of five of the nine City Council members, a council majority. As a result, Karr noted, any task force recommendation that all five council members on the task force support will win subsequent council passage.

One of the council members on the task force, Scott Olson, floated the idea of putting the new recreation center on Harrison school property, and on Thursday, Olson was on vacation and not able to push the idea.

The other task force members, though, said the school district should take Harrison school, at 1310 11th St. NW, off the closing list in any event.

Vernon noted that City Hall currently is directing millions of dollars in federal disaster money into the Harrison area to build homes to replace what was lost in the 2008 flood. The last thing the city and the school district needed, she said, was a “half-baked” Harrison school, part school and part recreation center, that wouldn’t be able to handle what the city expects will be a growing population of children in the neighborhood.

Council member Ann Poe, a task force co-chair, said trying to use part of the school for part of the city’s recreation center would be no different from what the city has at its east-side Ambroz Recreation Center, which is in an old school that the city has been trying to get out of for years.

Both Vernon and Poe noted that Harrison school is out of the way. In contrast, they said putting a recreation center along busy Ellis Boulevard would let the city “showcase” the building. Such a location also would put it near a trail and next to the “greenway” along the river where flood-damaged homes once stood. No new construction can take place in the greenway, and so part of it is apt to become ball fields. Ball fields next to a recreation center makes sense, Vernon said.

At the close of the meeting, though, the task force stopped short of turning its back entirely on the Harrison school option and so did not move ahead on Poe’s motion to eliminate the idea from consideration.

The new recreation center, which the city has been working to site for more than 18 months, will replace the flood-ruined Time Check Recreation Center, which was demolished this week.

A first task force settled on three possible sites for the new facility, all of which were in or next to Ellis Park. The council rejected those earlier this month and called for a new task force.

Karr said he was open to using some revenue from the city’s existing local-option sales tax to help pay the facility’s costs if they exceed more than the current budget of about $3.4 million.

Cedar Rapids city officials are taking action to keep the century-old Cedar Rapids Fire station at the corner of Fifth Street and E Avenue NW from being demolished. (image via Cedar Rapids GIS)

Some history here is on target to be saved.

Nine months ago, City Hall made it clear it wasn’t going to let the wrecking ball get a little, century-old, neighborhood fire station at Fifth Street and E Avenue NW.

And on Thursday, city officials set a public open house for Monday, Feb. 13 to get ideas from neighbors and others about how to reuse the historic, flood-damaged building.

The open house is 4 to 6 p.m. at St. Patrick’s Parish Center, 120 Fifth St. NW.

In addition, City Hall has received proposals from three entities interested in saving other flood-damaged city buildings that have been on the city’s demolition list after being bought out by the city.

In response to a request from the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, the City Council had said it would keep certain building off the demolition list until Feb. 1 to see if anyone had an interest in redeveloping them. Three entities do.

One of the three proposals comes from KHB Redevelopment Group LLC of Cedar Rapids, which has expressed an interest in redeveloping and relocating if necessary three commercial buildings at 102 Third Ave. SW (Gatto Building), 120 Third Ave. SW (office building) and 426 First St. SW (Emerson Lock & Key).

KHB is comprised of three local businessmen, Robert Hach Jr., former owner of the historic Hach Brother Building, 401 First St. SE; David Kapler, a licensed civil engineer; and Timothy Blumer, a retired Rockwell Collins electrical engineer.

A second proposal comes from Baron Stark, president, Stark Real Estate Holdings Inc., Fairfax, Iowa. Stark also has expressed in interest in the above three buildings as well as a commercial building at 222 Third Ave. SW (Barron Motor Supply), one at 615 K Ave. NW (barbershop and Laundromat) and a church at 800 G Ave. NW (Lifeline Ministries Church).

Stark, who is redeveloping properties in Czech Village, previously entered into redevelopment agreements with the city that have removed the former A & W Family Restaurant, 1132 Ellis Blvd. NW, from the city’s demolition list as well as two Czech Village storefronts at 1501 and 1507 C St. SW.

A third proposal is from the New Bohemia Group Inc., which proposes to redevelop a commercial building at 1207 Second St. SE (Cedar Rapids Tent & Awning) and three houses, 1226 First St. SE, 213 13th Ave. SE, and 1301 Third St. SE.

The New Bohemia Group Inc. envisions turning the commercial building into the group’s central office and a welcome center for the neighborhood. The houses would provide living and working space for artists in a “NewBo Artist Colony,” John Schnipkoweit, president of the group, says in a proposal letter to the city.

Christine Butterfield, the city’s community development director, on Thursday said that her department will review the proposals in preparation to present them to the City Council for consideration.

As for the old firehouse on E Avenue NW, city officials said last spring that moving the 3,925-square-foot brick building probably was a better option than keeping it in place.

The building sits in the midst of a major storm sewer reconstruction project under E Avenue NW, for which the city has received an $8.9 million federal grant.

The firehouse opened at the start of 1909 when firefighters and their fire horses moved into the building. Less than three weeks later, on Feb. 23, 1909, one of the horses, Tom, was seriously injured and put down at the scene after crashing into the F Avenue bridge on the way to a fire call.

“This is entered into the log book with the deepest regret to all,” the fire captain wrote at the time.

The city’s 40-year-old marketing slogan, “The City of Five Seasons,” continues to confuse even as the unfortunate tagline that came to accompany it, “The City of Five Smells,” sturdily remains in place.

In recent weeks, the five-smells moniker has been embraced by some making the case against Penford Products Co.’s proposed industrial expansion into a city park next to Czech Village and just across and downriver from downtown.

Additional odors — Penford officials say there will be no additional odors — that could come with an expansion will only assure that the city keeps on smelling, opponents of the Penford proposal say.

Of course, the specificity of five smells only came to be with the arrival of the slogan, which was the brainchild of a local advertising agency in the late 1960s.

Mark Stoffer Hunter

Cedar Rapids historian Mark Stoffer Hunter said the local reaction to the slogan was immediate once the city began actively promoting the slogan in the mid-1970s.

“As they got more public about it, the reaction by the locals was that it really is The City of Five Smells,” Stoffer Hunter said. “And partly this came out of the fact that they didn’t understand what The City of Five Seasons meant. I think that was why it was lampooned a little bit.”

By May of 1982, comedian and actor Robin Williams responded, “You mean The City of Five Smells?” when someone in the audience at his Paramount Theatre performance shouted, “How do you like Cedar Rapids?” At one point in his act, he turned himself into a passenger in a cab: “This your first time in Cedar Rapids, Mr. Williams?” the cabbie said. “I’ll close the windows.”

Tim Boyle, who was emerging as a popular radio DJ in Cedar Rapids at the time, said that Williams didn’t invent the idea of five smells, but instead knew that the smells had become “common parlance” locally and so incorporated it into his act.

Tim Boyle

Boyle himself was part of a Cedar Rapids comedy troupe back then, and he said, “I remember writing a joke that Mayor (Don) Canney had gotten federal funds to build a nine-story Air Wick solid on the city’s southwest side.”

Stoffer Hunter, Boyle and Dick Hogan, a retired Gazette writer who reviewed Robin Williams’ 1982 performance at The Paramount, agree that the smells of Cedar Rapids were much worse 30 years ago.

The most knee-buckling of smells back then emanated from the hog-slaughtering plant at the end of Third Street SE.

“That’s what really smelled bad,” Boyle said. Added Hogan, “I mean on some days, whew.”

In the late 70s, Stoffer Hunter said the city’s five smells typically consisted of those coming from the former Sinclair/Wilson/Farmstead hog plant, the city’s sewage treatment plant, which sat near Czech Village on the Mount Trashmore landfill site, the landfill itself, and then the Quaker and Penford plants next to downtown.

Dick Hogan

“I lived in southeast Cedar Rapids, just off Mount Vernon Road SE,” said Stoffer Hunter. “And when the wind was right, we would get the combined smell of the slaughterhouse, the sewage treatment plant and the landfill. The mix was just awful.”

The slaughterhouse closed about 20 years ago; the sewage treatment plant moved in 1980 to the edge of the city; and the landfill, which had been closed, has reopened temporarily to take in debris from the city’s flood recovery. The local solid waste agency’s open-air compost operation at the base of the landfill still can generate smells, but the agency has talked about moving the operation elsewhere.

The Air Quality Branch at Linn County Public Health reports that no place in Cedar Rapids or Linn County has exceeded national air-quality emission standards for about a year.

As for Penford, “They have a pretty solid compliance record given the complexity of their facility,” said Shane Dodge, Public Health’s branch manager.

Odors are more difficult to measure, Dodge said, and he reported that his agency can’t recall the county’s odor regulations being used to resolve a complaint in the last 20 years.

From the start, when The City of Five Smells first took hold, Stoffer Hunter said longtime local residents always have said that any industrial smell in Cedar Rapids is really just one smell, “the smell of money.”

“It means that we have vital, productive manufacturing industries in town that provide good-paying jobs,” Stoffer Hunter said the sentiment has been among some.

Penford debate

• The Cedar Rapids City Council has given Penford Products Co. and any other entity until March to present a proposal to buy the city’s 11-acre Riverside Park, which sits between Penford on one side and the Czech & Slovak Museum & Library and Czech Village on the other.
•  Penford officials say they are in discussions on proposals to expand the company’s corn wet milling business to provide more “biomaterial” that can be used by industries eager to replace petroleum-based materials. They say the company has not been able to expand because it is landlocked at its site at 1001 First St. SW.
•  The Czech & Slovak Museum’s staff members and board of directors have come out against the sale of the park to Penford, saying that allowing the industrial operation and its odors to expand into the park would hurt the museum experience next door.
•  City Council member Monica Vernon has said the new jobs that could come with a Penford expansion might not be worth additional odors. In turn, council member Justin Shields has called Vernon’s position “a bunch of baloney.” Why is Penford suddenly getting blamed for all the city’s smells? Shields has asked. And what community wouldn’t be fighting for additional, good-paying manufacturing jobs? he has added.

In an aerial photo taken Friday, Nov. 21, 2008, Penford Products at 1001 1st St SW in Cedar Rapids. (Jonathan D. Woods/The Gazette)

A rendering of the new Public Works building, set for completion in 2014. (image courtesy Neumann Monson Architects)

City Hall on Tuesday unveiled a picture of what the city’s new Public Works Facility will look like once it is in place in 2014.

The image comes as city officials prepare to hold an open house on Wednesday, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., on the second floor of the existing Public Works Facility, 1201 Sixth St. SW, to talk about the city’s redevelopment plans for the new building.

In December, the City Council voted 8-0 to demolish the existing building, which took on flood water in 2008 and which once was home to a crane manufacturing plant, and to replace it with a new, $35 million building.

The new building will go up at the same site, only closer to and facing 15th Avenue SW. City employees will stay in the existing building until the new one is in place.

The new building won council support, in part, because it will house in one facility what is now spread over 10 facilities.

The council also concluded that the old crane plant, with multiple support posts, is no longer an efficient place to store and service the city’s fleet of large Public Works Department vehicles.

In December, Dave Zahradnik, the project architect for Neumann Monson Architects of Iowa City, said the city annually will ave 13,000 work hours and $845,000 by building an open, efficient area so workers don’t waste 10 to 15 minutes a day maneuvering equipment around the posts in the current building.

The city has said it will have $17 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster funds and a state I-JOBS grant of $5 million to help pay for the new building. Mayor Ron Corbett has said the city may also use revenue from the city’s local-option sales tax as it has done in the construction of the city’s new library and will use to build the city’s new animal shelter on the campus of Kirkwood Community College. The library and shelter, like the Public Works Building, were hit by the 2008 flood.

In demolishing the existing building, city officials are studying to see if the building’s front corner can be saved and used in some fashion in the new building.

Cassie Willis, spokeswoman for the city, on Tuesday said the Wednesday evening open house is designed for both the general public and for neighbors who live around the Public Works Facility. Those neighbors have all received letters of invitation.

Those who attend the event will be asked to submit ideas for a name for the new building.

The forum will be at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 7, in the large auditorium of Art Building West, 141 N. Riverside Drive, Iowa City.

UI President Sally Mason and other UI officials will be on hand, along with architects involved in the projects and representatives of the programs that will be housed in the facilities. They will share design renderings, the latest information about funding, estimated construction timelines and other details.

The facilities were damaged in the June 2008 flood.

Attendees may also tour Art Building West, the latest flood-damaged building to reopen, after the formal presentation and a question-and-answer session. Refreshments will be provided.

Parking for the event is available in Lot 42, directly behind Art Building West, and to the north in the Hancher commuter lot.

The buildings at 1113 and 1117 Third St. SE in Cedar Rapids’ New Bohemia district will be restored with the help of a challenge grant through Main Street Iowa. The $50,000 grant will be matched by owner Jon Jelinek. (Cindy Hadish/The Gazette)

But businessman Jon Jelinek saw things differently, and now the homes will be restored with the help of a $50,000 challenge grant through Main Street Iowa.

“It’s going to complete that side of the street,” said landscape architect Ruth Fox of Cedar Rapids, who worked on the grant application. “Everything will be whole.”

Fox said the grant was one of nine awarded Saturday in a competitive process.

Jelinek found success after the Floods of 2008 in restoring other buildings in the fledgling arts and entertainment district, including Parlor City Pub and Eatery, 1125 Third St. SE.

Rebuilding the two houses will be more of a labor of love, he said, noting that he expects to pour more than $200,000 into the project.

The one-story home, 1113 Third St. SE, which sports a gaping hole after the removal of the rear of the building — an addition that sustained heavy flood damage — will become a one-room bed-and-breakfast with food catered by Parlor City.

Jelinek said the two-story building, 1117 Third St. SE, will have commercial space for a business on the first floor, with a two-bedroom apartment upstairs.

A rendering shows the plans for the renovated buildings. The home on the left will house a business with a two-bedroom apartment upstairs, while the one on the right will serve as a one-room bed-and-breakfast. (Ruth L. Fox Landscape Architecture & Planning)

That living space was integral to the neighborhood at its inception, when business owners lived above or near their shops.

The smaller home, at 264 square feet, was built in 1875 by Albert and Anna Herda and was one of the first houses in the neighborhood, according to the grant application.

John and Effie Blazej built the larger home in 1900. Once restored, the building will have 1,588 square feet.

Already, CSPS, a 120-year-old Czech social hall, and the firehouse next door have undergone a $7 million rehabilitation.

Jelinek restored the building housing Parlor City and the one next to the restaurant, 1123 Third St. SE, which houses Third Street Resale and True Salon.

The entire district is making a comeback with a new streetscape after it was inundated with 12 feet of Cedar River floodwaters in June 2008. The NewBo City Market is planned across the street.

“It didn’t really all hit me until after the flood,” Jelinek said. “It takes a little longer and a little more money, but you can’t (replicate) a 100-year-old building, so we’re trying to save everything we can down here.”

The $50,000 grant is the second for the Czech Village/New Bohemia Main Street District.

Two years ago, the Suchy building, 1006 Third St. SE, also received a grant.

Caterer Tony Bata plans to open a restaurant in the building, which was the site of the H.D. Youth Center when it was flooded in 2008.

David and Lijun Chadima of the family-operated Thorland Co., which owns the Suchy building, said completion is targeted for this spring.

University spokesman Tom Moore told the Iowa City Press-Citizen that an Iowa City police officer noticed water coming from the building a little before 1:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Moore says university officials were notified by 6 a.m., but he says the damage to the pianos had already been done.

One of the damaged pianos was a Steinway concert grand valued at $120,000.

Ten pianos had been moved to the building. Four of them sustained only minimal damage.

City of Cedar Rapids workers prime a pump to pump rain water collecting on the "dry side" of a 500 foot long tiger dam built along Cottage Grove Parkway SE on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2009, in southeast Cedar Rapids. The dam was built to protect homes from potential flooding of Indian Creek. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

For local government officials and other stakeholders, Thursday was the first step toward the future of Indian Creek. It’s also developing a model for tackling larger Iowa waterways.

“It’s to listen to them, about what they want for their watershed and what they’re thinking about,” said Stacy Langsdale.

Langsdale, of the Army Corps of Engineers’ Institute for Watershed Resources in Alexandria, Va., helped run the first in a series of workshops to create a vision for a sustainable future along the stream. The immediate priorities will guide the watershed management agency created in November.

About 60 people attended a daylong brainstorming session at Marion City Hall Thursday, which was followed by an open house. By the end of the day, the walls of the city council chambers were decorated with ideas jotted on large sheets of paper.

Lessons learned creating Indian Creek’s management plan will be put to use on similar plans along the Cedar and Iowa rivers authorized by Congress after the region’s June 2008 floods, Langsdale said.

“We wanted to do the whole basin, but it was too big too manage,” said Langsdale. “So we decided to come at Indian Creek as a pilot study.”

The Corps will host three more workshops by early summer, Langsdale said.

“We’ll be happy if by the end of the workshops we’ll have had a conversation about the trade-offs of the development alternatives,” she said. “Enough to develop a plan to meet the goals” set during the workshops.

More immediately for Indian Creek, it’s a collaborative approach that will cross city and township boundaries.

“Effective flood management is a shared responsibility,” said Mary Beth Stevenson, Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ watershed coordinator for the Iowa and Cedar Rivers. “You can’t take a piecemeal approach. What we’re emphasizing is the shared approach up and downstream.”

A flood sensor installed by the Iowa Flood Center is bolted to a bridge over Clear Creek Monday, March 28, 2011 near Oxford. (Brian Ray/The Gazette))

The Iowa Flood Center has doubled the number of its flood sensors across the state.

Center engineer Dan Ceynar told the Iowa City Press Citizen the online database fed by the 100 sensors provides real-time monitoring of water levels in Iowa’s rivers and streams.

Using an internal cell modem, the sensors update the database every 15 minutes. The sensors use sonar to determine how fast water levels are rising.

Ceynar says the sensors don’t compete with the U.S. Geological Survey’s 170 gauges that provide a similar service across Iowa.

Lori McDaniel is Iowa Department of Natural Resources supervisor of flood plain management and dam safety. McDaniel says there is a potential for a mixture of the two sensor arrays.

Hancher Auditorium on the campus of the University of Iowa as seen looking west over the Iowa River in Iowa City on Wednesday, July 9, 2008. (Cliff Jette/The Gazette)

Senator Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, today said the University of Iowa’s building replacement projects for Hancher Voxman Clapp and the Studio Arts Building, all damaged in the 2008 flood, will receive funds from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The Hancher Voxman Clapp Building was awarded $74.2 million and the Studio Arts Building was awarded $32.5 million for permanent relocation and improvements.

The university is still awaiting notification of federal funding for the UI Musuem of Art, which FEMA has ruled was not damaged enough in the flood to warrant replacement. UI officials have appealed that ruling.

“The flooding and subsequent damage to the University of Iowa was a loss to the University and its students,” Harkin said in a statement. “With this funding, the university will be aided in the reconstruction of these important buildings. Far more needs to be done as part of the rebuilding process, but this is a major step ahead in that process.”

The First Christian Church on Third Avenue SE in Cedar Rapids is among the buildings the city's Historic Preservation Commission is considering including on a list of endangered properties. (David Scrivner/The Gazette)

Liz Motsinger sees the odds stacked against her.

The 55-year-old Marion woman is almost single-handedly trying to save a historic church from demolition.

“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone,” Motsinger said, quoting Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” song, known for its lyrics: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Motsinger points to the connection.

First Christian Church, 840 Third Ave. SE, was purchased by St. Luke’s Hospital to make way for parking for the forthcoming Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa medical mall.

The church, built in 1912 and eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, hits the century mark this year.

Liz Motsinger

St. Luke’s took out a permit to have the building demolished. A 56-space parking lot is slated for the site, one of five lots and a four-story ramp that will surround the 221,144-square-foot medical mall.

“I think a lot of people just aren’t aware,” said Motsinger, who has passed out fliers, asking people to contact City Hall about the demolition.

Raising awareness about the vulnerability of the city’s historic structures is the purpose behind an “11 most-endangered” list the Cedar Rapids Historic Preservation Commission is compiling. Besides First Christian Church, other buildings under consideration for the list are the Furniture Mart building at 600 First St. SE, Barron Motor Supply building in the 200 block of Third Ave. SW, and the Mott Building at 42 Seventh Ave. SW.

The commission is expected to vote on the list Thursday during a 4:30 p.m. meeting at Community Connections, 1501 First Ave. SE.

Commission member Tim Klima noted that the designation won’t necessarily save any site, but teaches residents about structures “that are slowly and gradually slipping away from us.”

Owners of endangered properties also can be introduced to resources to help preserve their historic properties, he said.

First Christian Church is one of nearly 50 buildings from which the commission will cull its list.

The Great Furniture Mart on First Street SE in Cedar Rapids is among the properties being considered by the city's Historic Preservation Commission to be included on a list of endangered properties. (The Gazette)

Buildings have already disappeared since the process began last summer.

The city demolished hundreds of homes after the Floods of 2008 and will next raze flood-affected commercial properties.

Two worker cottages from a row that stood across from St. Wenceslaus Church, 1224 Fifth St. SE, were demolished in recent weeks and the former People’s Church, 600 Third Ave. SE, was razed in October to make way for an office building.

That church, which was not flooded, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Motsinger doesn’t want the same to happen to First Christian Church.

A volunteer at Mission of Hope, 1537 First Ave. SE, Motsinger said the building was offered to the non-profit group, if it could move the structure.

The Mott Building near the Police Station in southwest Cedar Rapids is a candidate for the city's Historic Prerservation Commission's list of most endangered properties (The Gazette)

The $2.2 million to buy a lot, relocate the building and renovate it was cost-prohibitive, she said.

Motsinger said the building is suited for its current location, where it could house the homeless, provide a place to feed more than 200 needy people per day and offer space for a larger food pantry and clothes closet than its current site.

“We need something that’s centralized in this area and the church building is in the perfect location,” she said.

Executive Director Tina Herring said Mission of Hope will keep its options open as it searches for a larger site.

Motsinger plans to be at Thursday’s meeting, where the commission will vote on the most-endangered list and whether or not to place a 60-day hold on St. Luke’s demolition permit.

“I’m not ready to give up until the wrecking ball swings on that building,” she said.

The list

Preliminary properties under consideration by the Cedar Rapids Historic Preservation Commission to be listed as the most endangered in the city:

• Louis Sullivan/Wells Fargo Bank building, 101 Third Ave. SW (flood protection construction zone)*
• Link-Belt/Speeder/Cedar Rapids Public Works, 1201 Sixth St, SW (flood damage)
• Third Avenue SW, 100 Block Street Wall, including Gatto and Esquire Buildings (flood buyout)
• Mott Building, 42 Seventh Ave. SW (construction zone)
• Knutson Building, 525 H St. SW (construction zone)
• Bever House, 1600 Washington Ave. SE, (parking)
• Fire Station No. 2, Fifth Street & E Avenue NW (storm sewer reconstruction)
• Great Furniture Mart building, 600 First St. SE (urban renewal)
• Old First Baptist Church, 1200 Second Ave. SE (medical district)
• First Christian Church, 840 Third Ave. SE (medical District)
• Fire Station No. 3, 1424 B Ave. NE (new central fire station)
• Czech School/Godwin Family Restaurants, 925 Second St. SE (construction zone)
• Barron Motor Supply, 200 block of Third Ave. SW (flood buyout)
• CR Tent & Awning, 1207 Second St. SE, (construction zone)
• Lifeline Ministries Church, 800 G Ave. NW (flood buyout)
• Ellis Park (city development)
• St. Patrick’s Church and related buildings, 120 Fifth St. NW
• Oak Hill Cemetery (decay)
• 1400 Block between A Ave and C Ave NE
• Joens Bros. Building, 59 16th Ave. SW (flood buyout)
• Grant Wood childhood home, 318 14th St. NE.
• Luther Brewer house, 847 Fourth Ave. SE (medical district) *
• Two worker cottages near former Sinclair plant 
• Salem Church, 221 First Ave. SW (flood buyout)
• Law Offices, 121 Third St. SW (flood buyout)
• Emerson Lock, 426 First St. SW (flood buyout)
• Barbershop, 615 K Ave. NW, (flood buyout)
• Jesus Church, 726 L Ave. NW (flood buyout)
• Teena’s Classic Furniture & Interior Design, 829 Second Ave. SE (medical district)
• House, 1316 Third Ave. SE (owned by St. Paul’s Methodist Church)
• Church, 1246 Second Ave. SE (medical district)
• Ilten’s, 106 Second Ave. SW (construction zone)
• Acme Graphics, 201 Third Ave. SW (flood buyout)
• Miller Apartments, 111 First Ave. SW (construction zone)

*property listed on the National Register of Historic Places

Source: Cedar Rapids Historic Preservation Commission

Owner Michael Richards has been working on the exterior of the Matyk Building, 1029 Third St. SE, to return the structure to its historic look.

“It’s really tedious to get paint off of brick,” said Richards, who removed the building’s whitewash to reveal original red brick and native Stone City limestone.

The new/old look of the Matyk Building, constructed in 1893 as a dry goods store, strikes a notable presence in the New Bohemia District in Cedar Rapids.

Red doors with hunter green trimwork complement other buildings in the district, including the Bottleworks Loft Condos at the end of the block. A streetscape was completed in the district earlier this year, and the NewBo City Market is slated to open next summer within sight of the building.

Just across 11th Avenue SE from the Matyk Building is the newly renovated CSPS performing arts center, a 120-year-old Czech social hall that reopened in August after a $7 million rehabilitation. Both buildings were inundated with 12 feet of Cedar River floodwaters in June 2008.

Richards has spent about $100,000 on restoration of the Matyk Building and received approval for a $4,500 ITC Midwest facade grant through the Czech Village/New Bohemia Main Street District.

He plans to open a neighborhood coffeehouse on the first floor when renovations are completed in three to six months. Tuckpointing on the building, scheduled for the spring, will add “another 100 years of life, at least,” Richards said.

The building is considered a significant contributing structure in the Bohemian Commercial Historic District, he noted.

Richards said the Matyk family, immigrants from what was then Czechoslovakia, opened their dry goods store on the first floor and lived upstairs.

The family operated the business through World War II and into the late 1940s, when it became the location of Mid States Distribution.

During the early 1950s, the store was among the first places where Cedar Rapids residents could purchase a television, Richards said.

His family bought the building in 1999, using it as a business and home before the flood. They started restoration work as soon as floodwaters receded, he said.

Richards, president of Soyawax International, has used the Matyk Building as the marketing office for Soyawax products for the past 12 years.

The company, a pioneer in the soy candle industry, uses the block warehouse section of the building to handle small orders, with wax production taking place at a Cargill soybean oil refinery.

Richards sees the building as part of the community, used as a peace center and for local arts gatherings, readings and other events.

“I always said I would open this as a coffeehouse when the streetscape was done,” he said. “Six years later, I’m doing what I always planned.”

But FEMA officials gave no indication of when they might make a ruling on the UI appeal, which asks the agency to reconsider its decision to not fund replacement of the flood-damaged art museum at a new location.

“They thanked us for providing the information,” UI Spokesman Tom Moore said. “It’s entirely up to them. They will respond when they respond.”

UI officials requested the telephone hearing with FEMA to restate their arguments about why officials think FEMA should fund replacing the museum of art at a new location. The deadline for FEMA to rule on the UI appeal was September but no FEMA response has been given, and UI officials said they wanted to bring attention to the appeal and move it forward.

FEMA has ruled that the museum building was not damaged enough in the 2008 flood to pay for its replacement elsewhere. But because the university can’t insure art in that building on the Iowa River, UI officials are appealing the decision.

During the conference call Monday, UI General Counsel Carroll Reasoner requested that officials at FEMA headquarters review all of the submitted documentation and evidence and rule that the museum qualifies for replacement.

The agreement for the franchise name extends for 15 years, while the management agreement is for 10 years with an option for five more.

Few decisions made by the current council have generated more questions in the community than its move early this year to buy the downtown hotel, then called the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel, from its creditors for $3.2 million. The hotel, like the arena, is now closed for major renovation.

Mayor Ron Corbett last night said the agreements with Hilton will provide two essentials that had been lacking during much of the 30-plus-year history of the hotel — stability and quality. The hotel has had a variety of owners and names over the years, he said, and at each turn insufficient attention was paid to keeping the hotel up.

Council member Kris Gulick said he particularly liked that the Hilton agreements call for money to be set aside annually for maintenance and repair. The hotel is now a “community asset,” said Gulick, and the city doesn’t want to find itself in this same situation 10 or 20 years from now — with a dilapidated hotel in need of major work.

John Frew, the city’s construction manager for the hotel and Convention Complex projects, said the agreements with Hilton require the city to retain ownership of the hotel for five years, after which it can sell or lease the property. The city will review Hilton’s budget for the hotel and Convention Complex annually, will get reports from Hilton monthly and will approve Hilton’s choice for manager as well as a subcontractor to run the arena, if the company chooses to hire one, Frew said.

Frew said Hilton typically would charge an owner an annual franchise fee of about $500,000 to use the DoubleTree by Hilton name, but the fee is waived because the hotel chain will be managing the hotel and Convention Complex, he said.

The arena, which has been known as the U.S. Cellular Center, is slated to open in the fall of 2012 in time to play host to the state girls’ volleyball tournament. The hotel and convention center will be ready in the spring of 2013, Frew said.

Floodwaters of the Cedar River rise around the Linn County Courthouse and City Hall as the river nears its crest in Cedar Rapids shortly before noon on Friday, June 13, 2008. (Liz Martin/The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — The City Council last night approved the specific ballot language that Cedar Rapids voters will see on March 6 when they decide whether to extend the city’s 1 percent local-option sales tax for 10 years for flood protection.

The language states that 100 percent of the revenue coming to Cedar Rapids from the sales-tax extension will go “to establish and maintain a flood protection system on both the east and west sides of the Cedar River.”

The upcoming vote was prompted by a petition drive from residents after a proposed 20-year extension was defeated in an election this spring. Under the language on that ballot issue, 50 percent of Cedar Rapids’ additional revenue would have been used for flood protection, 40 percent for street repair and 10 percent for property-tax relief.

The tax has already been approved through June 30, 2014. If voters sign off on the extension, it would be in place for another decade starting July 1, 2014.

The city’s senior real estate officer, Rita Rasmussen, had asked the council to take the first step and set the fair market value for the three acres of vacant land at $140,000, as established by a city-hired appraiser. Members did so without comment.

If purchase negotiations between the city and the property owner, Westgate Communities LLC of Dubuque, are not successful, the council will be asked to refer the matter to the Linn County Compensation Commission for resolution. The city will offer non-binding mediation to Westgate before pushing the matter to the commission, Rasmussen said in a memo.

Sheila Hefel of Westgate told the council the city had not communicated well with her firm about its intentions. She also said its figure for fair market value was wrong.

The former Science Station on First Street SE in downtown Cedar Rapids, including its McLeod/Busse IMAX Theatre (left) and the former Cedar Rapids fire station (center), as seen in October 2006. (Gazette file photo)

CEDAR RAPIDS — The three flood-damaged buildings that made up the Science Station on First Street SE next to the Cedar River are being acquired for redevelopment.

The buyer, 4000 LLC, a subsidiary of 2001 Development Corp., is a group of downtown property owners and large local employers that plans to convert the buildings into offices.

The buildings consist of the city’s one-time central fire station at 427 First St. SE and the buildings that flank it, the Paxton Building on one side and the IMAX Dome Theatre on the other.

The Science Center — the administrative entity of the Science Station — announced in late summer that the operation would not be returning to the buildings it had occupied before the Floods of 2008. At that time, the Science Center had a purchase agreement in place for the IMAX and Paxton buildings.

The redevelopment plans for all three buildings surfaced on Tuesday as the City Council approved a sale and redevelopment agreement with 4000 LLC for the city-owned former firehouse. The agreement calls for the city to sell the building for $75,000, and for 4000 LLC to invest at least $1.17 million to redevelop it and find a tenant or tenants within two years.

Jim Hoffman, executive director of 2001 Development Corp., said his group plans to convert all three buildings into office space in a transformation that envisions putting a second floor and new windows into what had been the IMAX Dome Theatre.

Hoffman estimated that the former theater would have room for 18,000 square feet of office space with the old firehouse providing an additional 10,000 square feet and the Paxton Building another 6,000 square feet.

“There are some exciting possibilities for all three of the properties,” he said.

He said the redevelopment group intends to restore the “historic fabric” of the firehouse, much as it intends to do at the flood-damaged former Great Furniture Mart building at 600 First St. SE. 2001 Development bought that property in January 2009 for $700,000.

Hoffman did not disclose how much the development group paid for the Paxton Building or the IMAX Dome Theatre.

He said 2001 Development’s long-standing approach to redevelopment downtown is to invest in existing buildings, vacant property and new building projects with the central intent to recoup the investment and support downtown redevelopment, not to otherwise profit.

The Science Station has been at Lindale Mall since the 2008 flood.

City rendering of the Cedar Rapids Convention Complex

CEDAR RAPIDS — On Tuesday, the City Council is expected to approve agreements that will put the Doubletree by Hilton name on the city-owned downtown hotel and turn management over to Hilton of the hotel, the U.S. Cellular Center arena attached to it and the convention center under construction next door.

Construction manager John Frew said the agreement should ensure that the facilities are a financial success.

“Of all the decisions we’re going to make, none is more important than this one,” he said Monday. “The reason why I say this is a game-changer is because this is the right decision. This is in the city’s best interest.”

Frew said projections show that the city should be able to make enough money from the hotel to repay the debt it’s incurring to renovate the building, and to help cover operating costs for the convention center.

“It will only do that if you have the right rate design and the right operator. I believe we do,” he said.

Frew said a hotel consultant believes the city can obtain a 64 percent occupancy rate in the renovated hotel, while Hilton believes the rate can be as high as 69 percent. Frew said the target room price for the 269 renovated rooms will be $10 lower than at the Cedar Rapids Marriott on Collins Road NE.

Frew said the price tag to renovate the 30-plus-year-old hotel has been climbing for two reasons — modifications to meet Hilton’s standards, and costlier-than-expected mechanical and electrical improvements to meet building and safety codes.

“That building was a fire trap,” he said. “Just to bring it up to code constitutes substantially more (in cost).”

The city had put the cost of renovation, including the $3.2 million purchase price, at about $25 million. Frew said that figure is now $30 million at a minimum, but hotel revenue is still expected to be sufficient to cover the debt payments.

“Our overarching principle has been that the hotel (renovation and operation) had to pay for itself,” Mayor Ron Corbett said. “Having someone like Hilton in there enhances the profitability of the hotel to where it actually makes a little money that can help subsidize the convention center operation.”

The arena is expected to be ready for reopening in the fall of 2012, Frew said, while the convention center and hotel will open in the spring of 2013.

Kris Lampher of Dave Schmitt Construction tears down the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library's storage building, which was used for storage before the 2008 floods, on Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011. (David Scrivner/The Gazette)

The site of the National Czech and Slovak Museum was abuzz with activity Thursday morning.

Crews brought in large machinery and ripped down an old cinder block facility on 16th Avenue SW.

The museum used it for storage, but damage from the 2008 flood rendered it it unusable.

Employees say the space where the building sat will be an open grassy area where people can enjoy outdoor activities.

“It will clear the way for a natural vista of the river for the National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library,” said Diana Baculis, the museum’s director of marketing and communications.

Floodwaters of the Cedar River rise around the Linn County Courthouse and City Hall as the river nears its crest in Cedar Rapids shortly before noon on Friday, June 13, 2008.(Liz Martin/The Gazette)

A 10-year extension of Linn County’s 1 percent local sales tax will go to voters March 6, county supervisors decided this morning.

With little debate, the supervisors unanimously passed a resolution verifying 4,797 signatures on petitions seeking the election in parts of the county that don’t already have the tax – Cedar Rapids, Marion, Hiawatha, Fairfax, Walford, and unincorporated areas – and setting the vote for the earliest possible date.

Formal ballot language must be adopted by 60 days before the election – Jan. 6. The group that conducted the petition drive want to extend the optional 1-percent sales for 10 years to raise revenue for flood protection on both sides of the Cedar River in Cedar Rapids. Each city council decides how to spend sales-tax revenue raised in their city.

If approved, the extension would run through 2024, taking effect after the present local-option tax expires in 2014.

A proposed 20-year sales tax extension, with revenues dedicated to flood protection, street repairs, and property-tax relief,  narrowly failed last May. Supporters plan to offer cleaner ballot language in their second run, allocating all revenues over 10 years for flood protection.

Supporters had to collect signatures of 5 percent of those voting in the last general election – 4,032, in this case.

County jurisdictions not named in the resolution won’t vote in March because they’ve already adopted the sales tax without a sunset date.

LOST Resolution

Smith, president of TrueNorth Companies LLC, has moved with the firm’s 115 Cedar Rapids employees into a fascinating new corporate home on First Street SE — in what had been the city’s public library before the historic Floods of 2008.

TrueNorth’s $10-million-plus re-imagining of the flood-damaged former library is a treat to experience, and it seems sufficiently forward-looking as to make the memories of what had been begin to fade.

“One of the goals was to make that transformation,” says Smith. “We don’t want this to be known as the old library. We want it to be known as the TrueNorth building. Yet we also like to preserve history. I guess we’d like to, maybe, hear it phrased, ‘There’s the TrueNorth building. The old library used to be on that site.’”

TrueNorth gained attention in the aftermath of the June 2008 flood by doing nothing more than minding its own business. The firm’s location at 421 Fourth Ave. SE — across from Greene Square Park and facing the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art on the park’s other side — turned out to be the one that the Cedar Rapids City Council decided it wanted as the replacement site for the flood-ruined library.

TrueNorth was not looking to move, but nonetheless, it obliged the city and went looking for a new home.

Ultimately, the City Council paid TrueNorth $7.5 million for the property and relocation costs. The council then entered into a development agreement with TrueNorth in which the firm paid $250,000 for the former library, agreed to spend at least $7.5 million to renovate it and agreed to add another 50 employees over a five-year period.

TrueNorth will have spent more than $11 million on the former library by the time the company completes what Randy Rings, the firm’s legal counsel, says has been “a complex opportunity.”

“What we do with a lot of our clients is really help them with their business planning, help them with their risk mitigation, and so we’re used to taking complex problems and coming up with solutions,” says Smith. “And we looked at this as an opportunity more than a challenge. And we also saw it as an opportunity to make a statement for our community and show our commitment to the community and the downtown.”

The former library consisted of a rectangular-shaped first floor with a smaller triangular-shaped area as a second floor over part of the first floor. TrueNorth’s transformation of the building features the build-out of an entire second floor, where most of the company’s offices now are located. Most of the first floor, which housed the library’s stacks, has become a 60-plus-stall indoor parking garage for TrueNorth employees.

One day, the 50,000 square feet of parking garage could become additional office space for TrueNorth or for building tenants, if and when a flood-protection system is built in the downtown and after the city adds to its public parking facilities. In total, with what is now parking area and second-floor areas that the company intends to lease out, the new TrueNorth Building has about 125,000 square feet of space, compared with 30,000 in its former building.

In the building renovation, TrueNorth has retained what had been the library’s Beems Auditorium on the first floor and has built some office space on the first floor to handle in-and-out traffic. The entryway has been enlarged a bit and a portion of a second-floor conference extends into it, giving those in the conference room a sense of floating in air. The design fosters the openness and collaboration of TrueNorth’s work environment, says Smith.

Yes, he says, investing some $11 million in a flood-damaged building with the river nearby comes with an element of risk.

“From a business standpoint, potentially the safer play would have been to stay where we were,” says Smith. “But we also look at the element of change and that old adage, ‘If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.’ Our adage today is, ‘If it’s not broken, improve it.’ And we really embraced that.”

TrueNorth’s move into its new home on Nov. 19 came 10 years to the day from when the company, which was created from three separate ones, moved into the building that now is coming down to make way for the new library.

The city of Cedar Rapids took possession of the former TrueNorth building in the first week of December, where construction on the new library is beginning and should be complete in June 2013.

[View with PicLens]

Thousands of artifacts were unearthed by a team of archeologists from Bear Creek Archeology in Cresco during a dig in Cedar Rapids recently. (Bryon Houlgrave/Freelance)

It’s hard to tell which discovery that archaeologist David Benn is most excited about:

The treasure trove of more-than-century-old bottles, trinkets, pieces of china, coins, nails, animal bones and much more that he and his digging crew unearthed here this fall in an effort to unravel the story of late 19th century working-class Cedar Rapids?

Or the portion of a single spear point shaped from chert that the crew found 8 feet below a city parking lot along the Cedar River and that Benn said comes from prehistoric Cedar Rapids of some 9,500 years ago?

He calls the find of the Hardaway spear point — named for a discovery site in North Carolina — “significant” and a rare event in Iowa and the Midwest.

“We found some neat stuff, both historic and prehistoric,” said Benn, 63, research coordinator and principal investigator for Bear Creek Archaeology of Cresco.

Benn and his Bear Creek team are working under a $295,000 contract with the Army Corps of Engineers to survey, dig and test and then recover and preserve artifacts from an area that the Corps will disturb as it builds a new system of levees and flood walls to protect the city from a repeat of the city’s 2008 flood.

The archaeological work is taking place on just the east side of river, which is the Corps’ focus for now. However, city officials are committed to finding local and state funds to also build west-side flood protection, which will prompt an archaeological study there if funds are found.

Earlier survey work of Benn’s team guided it this fall to dig in four spots along the east side of the river: in the park at First Avenue East near the Tree of Five Seasons; in the parking lot next to the GreatAmerica Building; in the city parking lot between Ninth and 12th avenues SE; and mostly in former backyards from the 12th Avenue Bridge to the edge of the former Sinclair packing plant site.

Prehistoric items

The rare find of the Hardaway spear point came from undisturbed soil about 8 feet below the city parking lot. The estimated age, about 9,500 years old, comes from its similarity to spear points dated from more extensively studied sites, he said.

Kenny Wiegand, a lab tech at Bear Creek Archeology in Cresco, cleans up a bottle from a recent dig in Cedar Rapids. (Bryon Houlgrave/Freelance)

“This looks like a temporary camp where a couple of guys on a hunting trail stopped and camped,” said Benn, who holds a doctoral degree in anthropology and archaeology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “It looks like one of the guys was refurbishing his weapon. The spear point broke. He took it off and put a new one on.”

Benn said 9,500 years ago, people had been in Iowa for a couple thousand years, and he described the Hardaway spear point found from that time as very thin and technologically advanced over projectile points from an earlier time.

“It was a shock,” he said when the prehistoric artifact turned up.

The dig also turned up prehistoric pieces of pottery from the Late Woodland Period of 1,000 to 1,500 years ago and the Middle Woodland period of about 2,000 years ago.

Early settlers

Much of the Benn team’s work focused on the historic, not prehistoric, in the hunt for artifacts of the earliest settlers in Cedar Rapids in the 1840s and of the first established residents in the city’s early working-class neighborhoods of 1870 to the 1890s in around the former Sinclair plant.

The archaeological digs, he added, necessarily focus on backyard privies and “middens” or outdoor dumps for household kitchen waste because both were burial sites for much of what a household discarded.

The organic material long ago decomposed into what Benn terms “night soil,” which his crew dug into to see what was there. Whiskey, beer, patent medicine and liniment bottles often ended up at the bottom of the privy, he said.

The middens yielded bones from an assortment of fish and animals, including cows pigs, sheep, chickens, turkeys, raccoons, squirrels and rabbits, he said.

Literally, thousands of artifacts were recovered and sent to Bear Creek’s laboratory in Cresco for cleaning, sorting and analyzing — all to help shape a future report to the Corps on working-class Cedar Rapids and on the city’s prehistory.

Working class

Benn said people can come to think they know about a place’s past, but he said memories misfire and written histories can often focus on civic leaders and leave the working class out.

“We’re going to know a lot about the working class people who built Cedar Rapids,” said Benn of his team’s work. “People know what they remember. But do they really know what’s gone on? Do they really remember what grandma served on Sunday? Where the china came from? What their role in society was or in the economic system?

“You have to know these things from the bottom up. You have to look at the little stuff and work your way up to the big picture, the big, social, cultural picture.”

The family of Randy Hanson, including his wife, daughter and mother were living in a mobile home next to the housebuilding project, designed to be 6-bedroom dream home. Progress on the project has been steady since the family was displaced as a result of the 2008 flood.

The first fire destroyed multiple areas of the home’s roof, drywall and interior. The second fire  consumed much of the east-facing part of the home.

Hanson appeared weary as he sat in a pickup  to stay warm, watching dozens of firefighters work to diminish the smoke. By 12:20 p.m., Shellsburg, Urbana, Atkins and Center Point fire squads and emergency response crews had most of the smoke out, but they were still at the scene until after 2 p.m.

Hanson said the fire originally started in the attic, after embers from a wood-burning stove floated up and sparked flames near the roof, which was recently installed.

The flames reignited Saturday morning from the same location, Hanson said.

“I guess that’s life,” Hanson said.

Floodwaters inundate the University of Iowa Theater Building (bottom), the UI Museum of Art (center), the New University of Iowa Art building (top right), Iowa Advanced Technology Labs, and Iowa Memorial Union (top left) Monday, June 16, 2008 in this view looking south along the Iowa River in Iowa City. (Brian Ray/The Gazette)

AMES – University of Iowa officials are requesting a hearing with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials regarding the status of possible FEMA funding for the flood-damaged Museum of Art, UI officials told state regents Thursday.

FEMA has ruled the UI museum building was not damaged enough in the 2008 flood to pay for its replacement elsewhere. But because the UI can’t insure art in that former museum building on the Iowa River, UI officials are appealing FEMA’s decision.

UI officials have requested that FEMA give them time for oral arguments via telephone the week of Dec. 19, to make the case for funding a building replacement. The deadline for a FEMA decision on the UI appeal was in September, and UI officials said they want to bring attention to the appeal and move it forward, and they hope the oral arguments will do that.

In fact, the citizen group — called CREST, for Cedar Rapids Extended Sales Tax — turned in more than 4,900 signatures and will turn in some additional ones to the Linn County Board of Supervisors yet this week to put the signature total over the 5,000 mark, CREST committee members Brad Hart, a Cedar Rapids attorney, and Mike Butterfield, a project civil engineer in Cedar Rapids, said Tuesday afternoon.

Butterfield said he was optimistic that voters will approve the extension on March 6 because CREST’s petition calls for a 10-year tax extension with all the Cedar Rapids revenue going to flood protection, a change from an unsuccessful effort on May 3 for a 20-year extension with money going to flood protection, roads and tax relief.

“My optimism really stems from, number one, the amount of success we’ve had in collecting signatures,” Butterfield said. “And more than that, this time around really answers a lot of the concerns that the community at large had last May. This is a shorter time frame and it’s dedicated to flood protection on both sides of the river.”

Ben Rogers, chairman of the Linn County Board of Supervisors, on Tuesday afternoon said the board now will review and count the group’s signatures with the expectation of setting a March 6 vote by next Tuesday.

On sales-tax questions, contiguous cities vote as a block, and so Cedar Rapids, Marion, Hiawatha, Robins and Fairfax all will vote on March 6, with elected officials in each of the jurisdictions deciding how their community will use the tax revenue. Voters in unincorporated Linn County and in the Linn County portion of Walford also will vote.

All other jurisdictions in the county either extended the sales tax for 20 years on May 3 or have had the tax in place without an end date.

Linn’s Rogers called the CREST signature effort “herculean,” noting that the group amassed nearly 1,000 more signatures than needed in pretty quick fashion.

“It took a lot of volunteers and a lot of hard work to get to where they are,” said Rogers, a Cedar Rapids resident. “And I really appreciate a citizen group taking charge of something so important as flood protection.”

Rogers said he will vote for the tax extension because the city needs flood protection and the city must provide some of the money for the system if it is to convince state and federal lawmakers to help with the cost.

CREST’s Butterfield said more than 50 people helped collect signatures in a campaign that began in midsummer.

Voters in the metro voting block defeated the ballot measure for a 20-year tax extension on May 3 by 221 votes out of 31,932 votes cast.

A vote by the Cedar Rapids City Council, which represents the majority of residents in the county, was sufficient to require the Linn supervisors to set the May 3 vote.

After the May 3 vote, Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett said any new vote on a tax extension would need to be prompted by a citizen petition drive. The drive needed to collect 4,032 signatures — 5 percent of the total of those who voted in Linn County during the 2010 general election — to force the vote.

The existing local-option sales tax in the metro area expires on June 30, 2014.

The Cedar Rapids Public Works Building at 1201 6th Street SW in Cedar Rapids on Tuesday, November 17, 2009. (Cliff Jette/The Gazette)

CEDAR RAPIDS — On an 8-0 vote, the City Council Tuesday night decided to tear down a former crane manufacturing plant and office building that has housed the Public Works operations since the late 1980s and replace it with a new $35 million facility on the same site, 1201 Sixth St. SW.

In voting for a new building, the council did not discuss how it would pay for the local piece of the cost. Mayor Ron Corbett said after the meeting that officials will look to use available revenue from the 1 percent local-option tax. The same practice is being used in two other projects to replace flooded buildings, the library and the animal shelter.

The city expects to have $17 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster funds and $5 million in state I-JOBS funding to help pay for the construction of the new Public Works Facility. Construction is slated to start in late summer 2012 and be complete in two years.

Tuesday night’s vote came after a lengthy presentation in which the city’s professional staff, project construction manager and project architects all recommended the construction of new building over two other options — repairing the existing building, or repairing and adding to it. At above $30 million, the costs were similar for all three options.

Marc Gullickson, president of Iowa operations for Ryan Companies US Inc., the project’s construction manager, said he and the architects entered their analysis of project costs without a bias toward repairing the existing building or building a new one. However, he said, he ended the analysis with a bias toward building new.

Gullickson compared the decision to those made about the future of other flood-damaged buildings: Theatre Cedar Rapids cost $7 million to renovate, for example, while building new would have cost an estimated $23 million. And the GreatAmerica Building, where Ryan’s Cedar Rapids office is located, cost $22 million to build but only $4 million to get back on line.

The Public Works Facility, he said, was different in that renovation and building new would cost about the same. He called it a “no-brainer” to build a new structure, which he said would cost 25 percent to 30 percent less to heat and cool and would be far more efficient in handling the city’s equipment fleet.

Dave Zahradnik, a principal with Neumann Monson Architects of Iowa City, estimated that the front-line public works employees would have 10 to 15 minutes more a day to provide services from a new facility because they won’t have to waste time, as they now do, trying to maneuver equipment around the numerous columns in a former crane manufacturing plant. That alone could equate to 13,000 work hours a year with a value of $845,000, Zahradnik said.

Council members Chuck Wieneke and Kris Gulick also called the decision a “no-brainer.” Gulick said a new building would house in one facility what was spread out in more than 10 facilities before the flood.

“Logic tells you it’s going to be more efficient,” he said. He recalled filling sandbags at the facility during the 2008 flood and said he learned firsthand then how “poorly designed” the old manufacturing plant was to move the city’s fleet of heavy equipment around in.

Council member Pat Shey said he had hoped that the existing building might be saved, but “the numbers are just not there,” he said.

The city’s Historic Preservation Commission had asked that the city repair the existing facility and not tear down what members view as a historic structure.

A sign for Premier Developers sits on an available lot on the 1000 block of 10th Street NW in Cedar Rapids. A city program that combines free lots with homebuyer incentives is desgined to fill in emply lots in area of the city that were flooded in 2008. (Cliff Jette/The Gazette)

How appealing is a big smile with a bunch of missing teeth?

That, said City Council member Pat Shey, is what the flood-hit core neighborhoods here likely would resemble for years without some gap-filling help from City Hall.

That help has begun to arrive, 3 1/2 years after the city’s historic 2008 flood, as construction has started on the first of dozens and perhaps 200 or more new homes that are slated to be built with public subsidies on vacant lots where flood-damaged homes once stood.

The city’s infill home-building program — called ROOTS for Rebuilding Ownership Opportunities Together — has $11.1 million in federal disaster funds to help provide an attractive 25 percent discount on the sale price of a new home to homebuyers who meet affordable-housing income guidelines. The sale price also is lower than it would be because the city is providing each home a free lot.

In trade, the buyers agree to move into new homes in the old neighborhoods where the property values have dropped and where the ability for property values to stabilize and grow remains an unknown. The buyers also agree to stay in their newly purchased homes for five years to enjoy the full sale-price subsidy, which will average about $30,000 per home.

“If I was younger, I’d be all over something like this,” Shey said. “It’s a heck of a deal.”

Valerie Vaage, a 27-year-old administrative assistant at a local medical clinic, and her partner, Chad Hale, 31, a laid-off wind-energy technician now attending school full time, are among buyers of the first new homes now going in the city’s flood-impacted neighborhoods.

Vaage said she feels particularly fortunate to be building at 1030 10th St. NW because the site is about the farthest from the river as any of the lots on which the new homes will be built. All the lots are outside the 100-year flood plain and outside the construction zone set aside for the city’s new flood-protection system, but Vaage’s new house is on the edge of the 500-year flood plain, she said.

Her decision to invest in a new home on 10th Street NW came with some pause because Vaage didn’t find the neighborhood three blocks from Ellis Boulevard NW all that appealing what with some of the homes torn down and a scattering of vacant lots. But the lot next to the one on which her new home is going up also is getting a new home as are two others in the block.

“That kind of brought me some peace of mind,” she said. At the same time, she said she also she supports the idea of rebuilding a neighborhood.

“I felt I could contribute to that just by building a home there, and I really liked that,” Vaage said.

Caleb Mason, housing redevelopment analyst for the city of Cedar Rapids, reports that there are a handful of new homes in the early stages of construction as part of the ROOTS initiative.

About 18 approved builders — including four non-profit groups — have been awarded 126 vacant or soon-to-be vacant lots, most in northwest Cedar Rapids, some in southwest Cedar Rapids and a few in southeast Cedar Rapids neighborhoods.

Zac Grigg of Winthrop, with Delaney Concrete Contracto,r lays rebar on insulated tarps to keep the ground warm in preparation for pouring the concrete foundation of a home at 1712 Hamilton St. SW in Cedar Rapids. The house being built is part of the ROOTS program. (Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette)

The funding should support the construction of 200 to 215 new homes, Mason said, though some of the builders, including Kyle Skogman and Jim Sattler, say the funding will support the building of more than 300 new homes.

Skogman and Sattler suggest that the housing market in the older, flood-impacted neighborhoods might not be able to attract 300 new buyers, but the City Council’s Development Committee wants to focus on the core neighborhoods, Shey said.

The ROOTs program is the third round of federal disaster funding that has provided subsidies to income-qualified buyers who have purchased more than 400 residential units, nearly all in developments closer to the periphery of the city. In the program’s first two rounds, the city’s buyout program of flood-damaged homes had not progressed far enough to have lots available. Now the city has those lots to help replace affordable housing lost in the 2008 flood.

A few vocal City Hall critics have questioned the idea of giving away lots that the city has acquired through the federal buyout program, though the federal government supports such a program if it achieves what the city’s Mason calls a “national objective.”

He said ROOTS does that in two ways — by providing affordable housing to those with low-to-moderate incomes; and by addressing “slum and blight.”

All the new owners must have household incomes at or below 100 percent of the area’s median income and 51 percent must have household incomes at 80 percent of below the area’s median income. At the same time, builders must submit itemized prices and limit their profit margins to 15 percent of cost.

Builders like Skogman, Sattler and Bob Vancura, president of Premier Developers in Marion, doubt much new building would take place in the flood-impacted neighborhoods that the city wants to revitalize without the incentives.

“If you don’t have some incentive to get people back down there and to invest, you wouldn’t see much activity there,” said Sattler. “It’s just a fact of life.”