Corbett unhappy with new Event Center price tag

The price tag on the city's $67-million Event Center project is going up by at least $4 million and probably more with construction work on the project yet to start, a displeased Mayor Ron Corbett said Wednesday.

The cost jump came to light during Corbett's appearance at the city's Five Seasons Facilities Commission on Wednesday, where he went to inform the commission that he would be forced to ask the City Council to increase the Event Center budget, a move that will require more local funds for the project than the $17 million already needed.

Not all is cordial between Corbett, the City Council and the commission, it turns out.

Corbett said the current Event Center project budget allows for only $3 million for property acquisition and tenant relocation, while the city this week and last month agreed to property purchases and relocations that cost nearly $7 million.

Corbett asked the commission what role it had in crafting the existing $67-million Event Center budget, and then he asked if the commission thought it first had to approve a budget amendment before the City Council did.

Patrick DePalma, the commission chairman, said the commission, in fact, helped create the initial budget, but DePalma said the commission could not weigh in on need to amend the budget now because he and the commission are now being excluded from much of the planning and design now under way on the project.

Swore told the commission that the City Council had hired professional consultant Frew Nations Group to head up the Event Center project and that the city was depending on its expertise to design and build the project. The project was too expensive and complicated to turn over to the “volunteers” on the council-appointed commission, Swore said.

Swore said, in part, he was at the Wednesday commission to see if he could smooth over “rough edges” that he said existed because DePalma and commission members felt they were not being included enough in the Event Center planning and design.

DePalma allowed that “communication” between Frew Nations Group and the commission could be better, and he said Frew Nations Group had asked him “zero” times to weigh in on plans and design.

Swore said Frew Nations Group “was in charge.”

Longtime commission member Al Varney told Corbett and Swore that the commission would have liked to have played a role in the hiring of the Event Center project manager or at the very least to have had the mayor or a council member talk to the commission about the hiring soon after it occurred more than six months ago.

“We would have appreciated it,” Varney said.

New commission member Scott Byers put Corbett on the defensive when he suggested that the property acquisition for the Event Center, which is the central reason for the need to add to the project budget, “could have been handled more artfully.”

Corbett questioned the suggestion, saying that appropriate property appraisals were done on purchased property without the threat of condemning property via eminent domain.

The Event Center's new convention facility will go up next to an upgraded U.S. Cellular Center arena and Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel in the block bounded by First and A avenues NE and Second and Third streets NE. Third Street NE will close. Only the former Roosevelt Hotel, now an apartment building, will stay in place on the block with the new convention facility.

The City Council has agreed to pay Armstrong Race Realty Co. $5.24 million for much of the property on the block with an additional expense for tenant relocation. The city also is paying $1.25 million for a private parking garage on First Avenue NE next to the Roosevelt. Fifty percent of the garage is owned by Cedar Rapids attorney Tim White and his wife, Jan, and 50 percent by Donna Noce.