Cedar Rapids adopts design guidelines for flood control system

CEDAR RAPIDS - The City Council approved Tuesday an amendment to the flood control policy designed to ensure that consistent aesthetic guidelines will be used in construction of the city's $600 million flood control system.

Council member Ann Poe, chairwoman of the council's Flood Control System Committee, said a commitment to continuity will be important as it could take 20 years to complete the project.

The idea is that the first part of the system should fit with the design of parts that come later after current members of the council and current city staff may have been replaced by others.

Sandy Pumphrey, a city project engineer, said the guidelines should protect against a 'patchwork quilt” of colliding looks as the system is built.

Pumphrey said the policy amendment will create a design review process, which will include design consultants and city staff as well as the Visual Arts Commission, the Historic Preservation Commission and the City Council.

Poe said the system is expected to include a number of monuments along the route of the flood control system, which she said will be opportunities to address pieces of city history.

Work on the system, which will include earthen levees, flood walls and removable flood walls, will come in phases. The riverfront amphitheater doubles as a piece of the system as does the flood wall in front of the new CRST headquarters going up downtown.

Work will proceed next to raise the flood wall at the Quaker Co. plant and to design and build flood control in New Bohemia, which has experienced minor flooding since the 2008 flood, and Czech Village across the river from it.