Cedar Rapids' first Downtown Summit upbeat

Cedar Rapids' first “Downtown Summit” was a  mellow affair fueled by good food, conversation and inspiring speeches.

More than 75 attendees and about 20 exhibitors turned at the Armstrong Centre to see what others are thinking and doing in the downtown area still struggling to recover from the record June 2008 floods.

Despite a light turnout, the chemistry appeared to be good.

“I don't know how many people are coming, but it's important for everyone downtown to know what everyone else is doing,” said Candy Wong, part of a group from the Water Tower Place condominium development trying to promote the idea of planted “green roofs” on buildings. She said using the roofs like the demonstration project at Water Tower Place will prolong the life of roofs, reduce energy consumption in buildings, and reduce flooding.

The president of Gronen Properties in Dubuque and U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, were featured speakers.

John Gronen told stories of the many buildings he'd been told weren't worth saving that his company went on to restore successfully and profitably.

“Within reason, you can save almost any building,” Gronen told about  listeners at the Cedar Rapids Downtown District event. Saving old buildings is almost always more sustainable than destroying them and building new, Gronen said, because they save the “energy” built into the structures.

Gronen's reputation has spread as his company expanded from one modest building restoration project using federal historic preservation tax credits to the green restoration of the once-grand Roshek Brothers Department Store that helped bring  a large IBM operations center to Dubuqe.

To date, his company has restored a half-million square feet of historic building space at a cost of more than $65 million.

Gronen emphasized the importance of building sustainably, using multiple forms of sophisticated financing, and going over each project extra-carefully in the pre-development phase. Gronen projects often reduce the energy bills in the structures by half from their pre-renovation levels.

The real estate arm of IBM was not keen to put the project in Dubuque, Gronen said, because the company had already identified a new “spec” building in South Carolina that was finished and ready to go.

“They thought we'd never it that done by the June (2008) deadline,” Gronen said. “We were told pretty clearly bo some people we'd never be able to pull this off.”

Gronen credited a team that included Paulson Electric Co. of Cedar Rapids that worked nights, weekends, and even holidays to make incredibly tight project deadlines.

Downtown District President Doug Neumann and U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack spoke to the group, along with Gronen.

Neumann told the group that the downtown area will receive about $1 billion in new investment during a five-year flood recovery period, including about $250 million in private sector investment. He said the recovery is off to a strong start, but everything is not rosy.

“The short term prognosis is troubling,” Neumann said. “There will be more business failures.”

The long-term prognosis is excellent, Neumann said. with projects like a new downtown events center and library coming, and exciting plans for a year-around city market and riverfront amphitheater that will likely make it out of planning into reality. He urged businesses to “hang in there” through the short-term pain, and become part of the long-term recovery.

Loebsack discussed a recent $35 million Economic Development Administration funding announcement that will allow major projects to build a business accelerator for the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce and upgrade the U.S. Cellular Center. He said it's critical that all levels of government share information and work together to speed the flood recovery.

The Downtown Summit kicks off the downtown district's “Bring Downtown to Life” brand launch week, which includes a spring cleanup on Wednesday and the kickoff of Taste of Downtown week from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Saturday in the Skogman Realty parking lot on First Avenue SE.