Back to the drawing board on new rec center location?

CEDAR RAPIDS - Almost three and half years after the Floods of 2008, the City Council seems to be getting farther away from a decision of where to build a new recreation center to replace the flood-ruined one in the Time Check neighborhood.

In fact, the council's three-member Flood Recovery Committee on Monday talked about starting the site selection process all over.

For months, the city parks staff's preference seemingly has been to build a 17,000-square-foot, $3.3 million recreation center on open ground near the tennis courts in Ellis Park. Two different groups of nearby residents oppose that option, though.

The recovery committee held its monthly meeting by a 6-acre woods next to Ellis Park east of Ellis Lane that has been one of three potential sites for the facility. Two other sites are in the park itself. Back in September, the committee said it would take the three sites to the full nine-member council for discussion, but that hasn't happened yet.

The wooded site next to the park appears to be more acceptable to both resident groups - Save CR Parks and the Northwest Neighbors Neighborhood Association - than the spot near the tennis courts. Members of Save CR Parks seem to want the rec center farther from their homes on one side of the park, while those in the neighborhood association want it closer to their homes on the other side.

In her presentation to the council committee on Monday, Parks and Recreation Director Julie Sina estimated that it would cost the city some $400,000 more than the project's proposed budget to build in the wooded spot next to the park if the new structure is built one foot above the 100-year flood plain. The cost would jump to about $1 million more if the new building on the wooded site were constructed to survive a flood like the one in 2008.

In addition, the city would need to cut down 30-plus trees to make way for the building there, city officials estimated.

The recovery committee is made up of three west-side council members. Chairman Don Karr said Monday that he was keeping an open mind on all three potential sites.

Meanwhile, member Chuck Wieneke said he could not support building in a spot that had been under 10 feet of water back in 2008, as the wooded site was, and at a cost of up to $1 million more than it would cost to build by the tennis courts in Ellis Park. He said the recreation center is a city facility and that he must think of all of Cedar Rapids' taxpayers - not simply of the wishes of a group of neighbors.

And colleague Justin Shields said he generally agreed with Wieneke's thinking on the matter. He said residents in southwest Cedar Rapids, Cedar Hills on the northwest side and elsewhere in the city would love to have the recreation center that residents in and near Time Check and Ellis Park are having so much trouble with.

Neighborhood leaders have suggested that the recreation center is a neighborhood center, while city officials have said it is a city center that happened to be located in a neighborhood. Some 80 percent of users of the Time Check Recreation Center came from outside the neighborhood, city officials have said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has agreed to provide about $2.6 million in disaster payments for a new recreation center and the City Council has set aside an additional $700,000, Sina said.