Cedar Rapids Iowa Veterans Welcome Center is staying put, despite member fears

CEDAR RAPIDS - The Iowa Veterans Welcome Center is not getting thrown out of the city's Veterans Memorial Building.

Such was the fear, though, of Chuck Elias, the center's executive director, who pleaded with the City Council this week to come to the center's rescue and stop the council-appointed Veterans Memorial Commission from forcing the center out into the street.

Gary Grant, chairman of the Veterans Memorial Commission, said on Wednesday that the commission never gave any thought to evicting the center, which operates as a gathering place, food pantry, clothes closet and job referral service on the Mezzanine level of the Veterans Memorial Building.

'They continue to be a valued tenant in our building,” Grant said.

Grant said the commission, which manages the Veterans Memorial Building and has opened it up for use by veterans groups now that City Hall is located elsewhere, did ask the Iowa Veterans Welcome Center to provide documentation to the commission and to sign a formal lease with proof of liability insurance.

However, the commission request via letter comes with the wording, 'as a condition of your continued occupancy,” which Elias translated into an eviction notice because he said his group can't comply with all of what is requested. The center's meeting minutes, for instance, are private, not public, he said.

Steve Rathje, board chairman of the Welcome Center's parent entity, the Freedom Foundation, on Wednesday said he, too, thought that the commission was bent on eviction with the language in its letter. Tenants don't provide private information to landlords, which is the commission's role is to the Welcome Center, Rathje said.

Grant and Rathje spoke on Wednesday, and by Wednesday afternoon, Grant had set aside much of what the commission had asked of the Welcome Center.

Grant said the commission sees itself as a partner to the veterans groups in the building that provide services to veterans. In that role, the commission does need some basic information about the groups so it knows who a group's leaders are and if a group's liability insurance covers what it is doing.

He said the matter had been resolved as far as he was concerned.

Rathje he wanted to see Grant's revised document.

'I'm hoping that it's something we can all live with, ” Rathje said. 'If it is, we'd love nothing more than to be in the Veterans Memorial Building. It's a great place for veterans.”

Behind the scenes, the Welcome Center's Elias and Mike Jager, a city employee who works as the commission's executive director, have been in a dispute that has led to conversations, not charges, with police and a complaint from Elias to the city's Human Resources Department, the Veterans Memorial Commission and others.