Public forum set on Cedar Rapids medical district issues

The Gazette and KCRG-TV9 will co-host a public forum on Tuesday, March 29, that takes a look at whether the proposed MedQuarter Regional Medical District that is in the works can be a model for both historic preservation and growth.

The forum will be at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art and begin at 7 p.m. Join us.

We want to do the forum because many in the public are interested in how the district would reshape the neighborhood, particularly at this time, where Physicians' Clinic of Iowa has plans to build the district's anchor.

The forum will be at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. KCRG-TV9 news anchor Bruce Aune will moderate and Gazette Opinion Page Editor Jeff Tecklenburg will help with questions. We'll go for at least an hour, with the option of adding 30 minutes if the conversation is on a productive roll.

If you cannot attend, KCRG 9.2 will broadcast the event live and TheGazette.com and KCRG.com will host live blogs from the museum.

Scheduled panelists are City Council members Monica Vernon and Pat Shey; Cedar Rapids Historic Preservation Commission Chairwoman Maura Pilcher and Cedar Rapids historian Mark Stoffer Hunter. We are seeking a couple of more. Officials from St. Luke's Hospital, Mercy Medical Center and Physicians' Clinic of Iowa, the three big medical facilities with a stake in the medical district, declined our repeated offers to be panelists. We feel they bring something to the conversation but they said being panelists at this time before the district becomes final is premature.

Cindy Hadish, who covers health issues for The Gazette, was a driving force for getting the newspaper and television station to host the forum. She notes that she's seen a disconnect by some people between presentations with a tree-lined, walking campus and plans on the table now to demolish buildings and build both surface and ramp parking in the district. At least two dozen buildings in the district are on or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, Cindy reports.

Thus, the forum's focus.

To participate: show up at the Museum of Art's main upstairs auditorium. Signs will direct you. We'll publish reminders for you in the time leading up to March 29. To submit a question ahead of time send to: cindy.hadish@sourcemedia.net or look for a link at www.kcrg.com/news that is taking questions. I'll take them, too, if you want, at lyle.muller@thegazette.com or in the comments section of this blog if you wish.

We also will take questions at the forum. We'll ask as many of those that are germane to forum's theme and see what we can learn.