Homebuilding resumes around Robins Cemetery

CEDAR RAPIDS — The one-half-acre Robins Cemetery, which is surrounded on three sides by Cedar Rapids along Council Street NE, won't stand in the way of homebuilding any longer.

Cedar Rapids city officials said that concerns raised this summer by the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) about the 'jarring and anachronistic visual intrusions' of the homebuilding that is encroaching on the small, 150-year-old cemetery have been set aside.

The SHPO concerns had put a stop to the construction of 29 homes in the Knollwood Park 4th Addition development as city and state officials debated the historical significance of the cemetery.

State officials became involved because federal disaster dollars are being used to provide subsidies for some of the homes being built near the cemetery. The federal money comes with strings, which include the need to satisfy historical reviews.

Paula Mitchell, the city of Cedar Rapids' housing and redevelopment manager, said Monday the dispute between the city and state 'has been resolved' and that homebuilding is proceeding.

In an October letter to the city from Steve King, deputy state historic preservation officer, King concluded that 'no historic properties (are) effected' by the homebuilding around the Robins Cemetery.

This conclusion aligns with one from the city's preservation consultant, The Louis Berger Group. The consultant earlier concluded that the Robins Cemetery is not eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. Instead, the cemetery is a 'common example of a rural cemetery that lacks architectural significance or significant historic association,' the city's consultant said.

The homebuilding near the cemetery stopped this summer after Dan Higginbottom, an archaeologist with the State Historic Preservation Office, questioned the Berger conclusion that the cemetery was not a historic property.

'Given the proximity (of the homebuilding), it is our consulting opinion that the proposed development would significantly alter (the cemetery's) rural setting and introduce jarring and anachronistic visual intrusions upon the local landscape,' Higginbottom said.

A few houses in the Knollwood Park addition already had been built directly to the east of the cemetery, and Higginbottom said more homebuilding around the cemetery 'would only compound and intensify' the effect.

In September, Robins city officials said Robins had erected a new fence around the cemetery in the past few years. The city's survey of the cemetery counted about 50 marked graves. Another 16 spots are thought to be unmarked graves, which have been identified with the help of dowser Bob Terry of Liscomb in Marshall County. Dowsers use of a sort of divining rod to search buried objects, including bodies.