City manager wants to move city offices to former federal courthouse

The daily operation of city government won't return to the flood-damaged-and-yet-to-renovated Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island - which has been home to City Hall since the building opened in 1927 - if the City Council approves a recommendation from City Manager Jeff Pomeranz.

Instead, Pomeranz is recommending that the offices of city manager, city clerk, city attorney, mayor and City Council, all of which have been slated to return to the Veterans Memorial Building, join other city offices already set to occupy the now-city-owned, former federal courthouse down the block from the Vets Building.

The former federal courthouse's large, third-floor courtroom also will be transformed into a City Council chambers under Pomeranz's plan.

Pomeranz was quick to emphasize late Monday afternoon that city government was not turning its back on the longtime home of City Hall.

He said city boards and commissions would continue to meet in the Veterans Memorial Building once it is renovated, and he envisioned the building being a spot for city officials to meet with business leaders and local and prospective employers. Some City Council meetings can be held there, too, he suggested. Other city government uses for the building will surface as planning continues, he said.

“It's fluid, it's open, it's a tremendous resource,” Pomeranz said of what most Cedar Rapidians consider City Hall. “The Veterans Memorial Building is a very important part of Cedar Rapids history, and city government will always have a presence in that building. We're not abandoning the Vets facility.”

The council will discuss Pomeranz's recommendation at its meeting this evening.

Pomeranz, who took over as city manager on Sept. 20 after 12 years as city manager in West Des Moines, pointed to recent tours for city employees and the public at the former federal courthouse, and from those tours, he said, emerged the thought that it didn't make sense to have crucial pieces of city government in two different buildings.

“As more and more employees, citizens, architects and others saw the old courthouse, we then realized that we were breaking up the team,” he said. ” … That raised the question, ‘Does it makes sense to all be together in one place?'”

During the recent public tour, the city's plan had been to put the city departments of finance, community development, housing services, human resources and civil rights on the first two floors of the former courthouse, with little use planned for the third floor.

Much of the third floor is taken up by the large courtroom, which has historic status and so comes with limitations on how it can be renovated. Pomeranz said the city can turn it into a council chambers while abiding by any historic requirements for the room.

An added consideration, he said, is that the city believes it can occupy the former federal courthouse more quickly and easily than it can the Veterans Memorial Building.

Both buildings were flooded in June 2008, but the courthouse's building manager, the U.S. General Services Administration, quickly began and completed a multimillion repair on the building after the flood in preparation for giving the building to the city. The city, in turn, provided the land on which the new federal courthouse is now being built.

Meanwhile, the city, its Veterans Memorial Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are still working through issues before repairs and renovation of the historic Veterans Memorial Building can start.

Pomeranz said he hoped to have council meetings, now held at Hiawatha City Hall, back downtown in the former courthouse by summer. City offices, now housed in an office park in northeast Cedar Rapids, should follow, perhaps, nine months later, he said.

“It's time that the city of Cedar Rapids comes back home and utilizes a facility within our community for council meetings,” he said.

In truth, the city's recent post-flood plans showed city government reoccupying just a couple floors on the Second Avenue side of the Veterans Memorial Building and no space on the First Avenue side.

The Veterans Memorial Commission is overseeing the building's renovation, and the commission has plans for expanded museum space in the building and also has expressed interest in using more of the building for veterans' services. The commission also has talked about leasing parts of the building.

On Monday, Mike Jager, the manager employed by the commission, said that he was aware of Pomeranz's recommendation to move city offices that had been expected to return to the Vets building into available space in the former federal courthouse.

One advantage of holding City Council meetings in the courthouse, Jager said, is that fewer, costly upgrades will need to be made to the existing council chambers in the Vets building so the space complies with modern building codes. The existing chambers then can be designed to handle meetings of less than 50 people with the new chambers in the courthouse used for the larger council crowds, he said.