Few seem to realize magnitude of new courthouse

Maybe the two cranes towering over First Street SE will get the public to notice the $160 million federal courthouse under construction there.

The eight-story edifice will be faced with stone and then glass that will stretch as wide as a football field from the Cedar River to Second Street SE between Seventh and Eighth avenues SE and look toward downtown.

Brad Thomason, leader of the Ryan Cos. US Inc. building team, and David Sorg, a principal with project architect OPN Architects Inc. of Cedar Rapids, scratch their heads at the lack of interest.

Sorg says people have yet to grasp the magnitude, beauty and importance of the courthouse. When complete and ready to open in fall 2012, the 330,000-square-foot building will stand a little taller than the nearby Great America Building.

“I don't think people understand the scale of this building in its context here,” says Sorg. “… I just don't think people can comprehend, because it just doesn't happen in Cedar Rapids, a building of this size.”

Thomason reported this week that the project - the ribbon-cutting was in late April - is on schedule and on budget. As many as 300 workers will be at the site at its busiest.

Within 30 days, crews should complete the building's foundation. They pounded H-shaped steel pilings into bedrock at depths of 30 to 80 feet. The amount of steel in the pilings would stretch over five miles and weighs 2 million tons. About 4.5 million pounds of concrete also are part of the foundation. On Dec. 2, steel for the building's columns will begin to arrive on the site and should be in place by August.

Thomason and Sorg note that the building will consist of two halves, with courtrooms on the right side, offices on the left and an eighth floor spanning the entire building to house judges' chambers. A glass atrium in the building's middle will sit where First Street SE between Seventh and Eighth avenues SE once was.

It's a great time to build, they say, because the slow economy has meant better prices for materials and from subcontractors. The building's steel, for example, will cost $2 million less than what had been budgeted for, Thomason says.

He reports that 70 percent of the labor on the project will be performed by workers in the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City area, with another 15 percent by Iowans outside the area.

Thomason calls the building “very complicated structurally” because of security and blast protection standards set after the 1995 courthouse bombing in Oklahoma City. The building will sit one foot above the crest of the June 2008 flood and six feet above the 500-year flood plain, he says.

The building also will incorporate “green” elements so it meets a LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, certification as mandated by federal rules for federal buildings. For instance, the building will save 31 percent more energy and will use 50 percent less water than the building code standards call for.

Sorg says it will be the arching stone face of the building covered by glass, 100 feet tall and 300 feet wide, that will make people's jaws drop, though.

A week ago, the toppling of a mobile crane caught some attention. There were no injuries. The mobile crane put the two giant cranes in place, and it is those that will do the captivating in the months ahead, Thomason says.