Downtown building demolition planned

CEDAR RAPIDS - Two portions of a building that formerly housed The Gazette offices in downtown Cedar Rapids are being prepared for demolition.

Architect and developer Steve Emerson bought the building at 500 Third Ave. SE from The Gazette Company in 2012, Emerson said additions constructed in 1954 and 1969 likely will be demolished in late winter or early spring.

'We need to see how it fits into a demolition schedule,” Emerson said. 'It will come down at some point, but there's no rigid schedule.”

Emerson said redevelopment options include additional parking or possibly downtown housing.

'Initially it will likely be surface parking, but I have a housing development planned for that which is a fairly significant project,” said Emerson, owner of Aspect Architecture. 'I'm going to wait on that because there's a lot of other housing projects seeking grants from the state that are in the core downtown.

'I'm going to let those get open and absorbed before I would do anything on that just because I don't want to saturate the market and hurt everyone's projects as well as my own.”

Emerson previously demolished a three-story addition to the building that was constructed in 1985. The two older additions housed offices and The Gazette's printing press.

The Gazette moved its printing operations in 1999 to the former Rockwell-Goss plant at 4700 Bowling St. SW.

The company now leases the 1923 building downtown, which faces Fifth Street SE, from Emerson for its Fusionfarm marketing division as well as some newspaper advertising sales operations.

The combined newsroom of The Gazette and KCRG-TV9 as well as executive offices of The Gazette Company moved last year to the company's building at 501 Second Ave. SE.