Knutson Building saved from wrecking ball — for now

CEDAR RAPIDS - Preservationists prevailed early Tuesday evening as the City Council, on an 8-1 vote, decided to immediately spend an additional $167,500 to stabilize and mothball the 128-year-old Knutson Building on the riverfront across from downtown.

A recently completed engineering study called the city-owned building 'dilapidated” with 'long-term deterioration within and throughout.” But the study said the building's exterior walls were structurally sound, Jennifer Pratt, the city's development director, told the council before its vote.

The assessment was sufficient for the council majority to try for the third time this year to see if it can find the financial means to renovate the building and give it new life.

The new engineering study put renovation costs at $2.175 million to $4.8 million.

In voting to stabilize rather than demolish the building, the council majority also said it wants to see a private fundraising effort come up with $2.5 million to fix up the property. The council set April 1, 2017, as the deadline to see if the community Is willing to invest in historic preservation and help save the building.

Mayor Ron Corbett said it is not difficult to imagine the private sector stepping up. A mix of private and public dollars helped renovate the Paramount Theatre, Veterans Memorial Stadium and Greene Square Park, and helped pay for the new library, the new riverfront amphitheater and the convention center.

Monica Vernon was the most impassioned of council members in making a case for preservation, saying it was important to save the historic architecture but as important to invest in a piece of history that will make Cedar Rapids attractive to people in the years to come. The city won't see a future with a growing tax base if it doesn't invest in projects like the Knutson Building that can make the city special, she said.

Council members Pat Shey and Scott Olson voted with the majority, but with reservations. Shey said he doesn't think every old building can be or needs to be saved. Both said they were willing to see whether the community can provide private funding help during the next 18 months.

Three members of the city's Historic Preservation Commission, which unanimously recommended earlier this month that the council stabilize the Knutson Building, spoke to the council before it voted.

Commission member Mark Stoffer Hunter said the building is historic and a lingering example of the working-class industrial area that was part of the west-side riverfront more than a century ago.

Amanda McKnight Grafton, chairwoman of the commission, reminded the council that it approved a new historic preservation plan for the city in September. She said the Knutson vote was the council's first opportunity to put the plan into action. Renovation costs for the Knutson can be lessened with the use of historic tax credits just as credits were used to renovate City Hall, she said.

In casting the lone no vote, council member Justin Shields said he wondered where the preservationists had been the past 40 years as the Knutson Building increasingly fell into dilapidation with a private owner.

He said he wouldn't vote to spend more city dollars on the building at a time when the city has other needs, such as a recreation center for the young and old or more funding to help renovate rundown housing.

'The time has come,” Shields said.

Former council member Chuck Wieneke also spoke to the council, agreeing with Shields that the building should be demolished.

The council purchased the three-story building in early 2013 in a $1.5 million deal that closed the salvage yard there so the city could get the property cleaned up as it was preparing to open its $8 million riverfront amphitheater next door.

Two attempts this year to interest private developers in the property failed to produce a viable plan that wouldn't require a significant amount of city dollars.