Downtown businesses propose temporary parking lot

Sufficiently anxious is a group of downtown businesses about the simultaneous demolition of three parking ramps that it is proposing to build a temporary surface parking lot at the site of one of the ramps, the city's First Street Parkade.

In a letter to City Hall, Jim Craig, an attorney at one of the businesses, Lederer Weston Craig PLC, has spelled out a proposal in which the group would spend about $270,000 to build a parking lot of about 100 spaces, with the revenue of $75 a month per space paid to the group to pay off the investment.

In return, the group, which has named itself Short Term Parking Solution LC, is asking the city to lease the parkade spot on First Street SE along the Cedar River to the group for $1 a year for three years with options to extend the arrangement beyond three years if the site is not redeveloped.

Members of the group, in addition to Craig's law firm, are Smulekoff's Home Store, Iowa Land and Building Co. (an Alliant Energy Investments' subsidiary), Higley Building Investment LC and ISCI LC.

In its proposal, the group proposes to pay the Cedar Rapids Downtown District a fee of $500 a month to manage the lot.

Vanessa Rogers, the district's vice president, on Friday said the district supports the parking proposal "1,000 percent" as a way to provide short-term parking assistance until the city builds additional parking in the downtown.

"We can all agree that parking is not the best and highest use for our prime riverfront real estate," Rogers said of the spot proposed for the temporary lot. "Right now, it's a great spot for redevelopment, but in the meantime, we'd rather have a temporary surfaced parking lot than just see it sit empty."

The City Council already has approved a new, 500-space ramp across from the Five Seasons Hotel and is working on a plan to build a similar ramp near the new federal courthouse.

In recent months, the city has said that federal disaster funds would pay for the demolition of the First Street Parkade, but the city also has said it did not have city funds identified to build a temporary surface lot on the site once the parkade is down.

Stepping in, the private business group hopes to have the new parking lot surfaced, lighted, landscaped and in operation by Dec. 1, a date premised on the expected completion of the parkade demolition in October.

The old parkade that the temporary lot would replace had been functioning only in part since it was damaged in the 2008 flood. Since the flood, parking has only been permitted on the parkade's first floor, which has provided 90-plus spaces. The temporary surface lot will provide service for what is being lost.

"Until a new structure is built, we're going to take every opportunity we can to find areas of parking wherever we can," Rogers said.

The Downtown District currently is managing a temporary, 22-space surface lot at the site of the former Siegel's store, which has been demolished since the flood.

In addition to the demolition of the First Street Parkade, two private parking ramps are being demolished in the block in which the city's new convention center is being built.