Cedar Rapids' flood recovery glass half full, Corbett says

By the numbers, city officials say flood recovery at the two-and-half-year mark is going well.

In a progress report for 2010 delivered at a morning news conference, Mayor Ron Corbett said the city's recovery from the June 2008 flood is a story of a half-full glass, not a half-empty one, and he said the progress in the city this year convinces him that the city's “best days are still ahead of us.”

In the city's number-heavy presentation, Corbett said it was fair to say that 2011 will be a year of construction on a wide range of city projects - Convention Complex, library, central fire station and a new west-side station, the Paramount Theatre and an animal control facility as well as the dual homes for city government, the Veterans Memorial Building on May's Island and the former federal courthouse down the street.

The following year, 2012, will bring to completion or near completion many of those projects, he said.

The Friday news conference took place in the former courthouse's large, third-floor courtroom, which the city likely will use for large public meetings in the years ahead.

City Council member Monica Vernon, the city's mayor pro tem, said some on the council are still talking about the possibility of using the room as the City Council's chambers.

Vernon on Friday checked off the “investment,” which is comprised largely of federal disaster funding, in the community since the flood: $31.5 million for buyouts; $10 million for demolitions; $65.8 million for housing recovery; $41 million for business recovery. She put the total at $148 million. Most, she noted, has come in the city's flood-hit neighborhoods.

Another $173 million has been spent on the city's public buildings and infrastructure - again most of it federal dollars - with the expectation of the spending of $200 million more for housing, business recovery and public buildings and infrastructure in 2011, she said.

Vernon called the spending “a worthy endeavor” and “an investment in the future success of Cedar Rapids.”

She recalled a different gathering in December 2008 at the flood-damaged St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church, which had just reopened after its renovation. That event, she said, was a time to give thanks that no one had lost his or her life in the flood and a time to take stalk of what the city needed to do to get back on its feet.

“That felt very different from today,” Vernon said. “We've come a long way. And we have a long way to go.”

Congressman Dave Loebsack, who has been part of Iowa's Congressional delegation that succeeded in securing a large amount of federal disaster funding for Iowa and Cedar Rapids, sat in the first row of Friday's news conference. Loebsack said it was nice to hear how the city has delivered on the money that Congress has provided it.

"I think it's fair to say, that when the disaster first struck, there was no one who was really altogether clear about just how much it was going to take and how successful we could possibly be," Loebsack said Friday. "That's why I wanted to be here today, to hear the city's progress report. I'm very impressed with them."